Cork residents face water outages of up to 10 days over ageing pipes

Niall Heal, the council's divisional manager for North Cork, said the local authority will write to Uisce Éireann urging it to take action

Fianna Fáil councillor Ian Doyle and other councillors recently attended a meeting organised by angry locals who say they are fed up with repeated outages in the general Freemount, Dromina, and Millford areas. Picture: iStock

Scores of people have been left without water for up to 10 days at a time in an area of North Cork, because Uisce Éireann is not replacing ageing mains pipes which keep breaking.

Fianna Fáil councillor Ian Doyle said many mains pipes serving parts of water supply system supplied from Freemount are decaying, and the utility urgently needs to invest in replacing them.

Mr Doyle and other councillors recently attended a meeting organised by angry locals who say they are fed up with repeated outages in the general Freemount, Dromina, and Millford areas.

“There is a huge problem with this," Mr Doyle said.

"There is a lot of very irate people out there who have been without water for anywhere between eight and 10 days at a time. 

"The weaker areas [of pipes] are breaking all the time. This plant [Freemount] services a huge area and what’s happening is not on.

There used to be several people involved in operating the plant and now there’s just one

"Uisce Éireann proposed to fill the vacancies and this still hasn’t happened,” Mr Doyle added.

Fine Gael councillor Aileen Browne said the breaks are seriously impacting householders, businesses, and farmers in a number of areas.

The Freemount plant also services the Churchtown and Buttevant areas, and there have been breaks in old pipes there as well, according to Fine Gael councillor Liam Madden.

'Absolute disgrace'

“This is going on far too long,” Labour councillor Ronan Sheehan told a meeting of Cork County Council’s northern division, while Fine Gael councillor Tony O’Shea described the utility’s lack of action as “an absolute disgrace.” 

He claimed there had been 46 leaks in the network, adding that only six of them had been properly rectified.

“It is hard to believe that they haven’t addressed theses issues. Trying to get a response from them is next to impossible. Uisce Éireann is not working,” Fianna Fáil councillor Pat Hayes said.

Niall Heal, the council's divisional manager for North Cork, said the local authority will write to the utility urging it to take action.

Meanwhile, similar issues were outlined in the village of Kildorrery, near Mitchelstown, by Fianna Fáil councillor Frank O’Flynn.

He said that a new mains is needed from the village out to the Ballyvisteen area, on the Limerick road, to ensure a quality water supply to meet the present and future needs of householders, farmers, and businesses.

Mr O’Flynn said the existing mains pipe is constantly breaking and this has been going on for a number of years.

The repairs are now like putting bandages on bandages and that’s simply not good enough

Mr O’Flynn said that Kildorrery is to get a new water reservoir, which will improve pressure in the area and which is welcome.

However, he added that increased pressure will only cause more breaks in the mains on the northern side of the village — and this has to be addressed.