Why does our island nation find water conservation so difficult?

There are regular shortages of water in parts of Africa, Asia and Australia.

Ireland has an abundance. It seems strict to charge for its supply to households and to give the contract to private operators, when the price will increase and cause hardship for those on low incomes. Water is essential. Some countries are returning control of the public water supply from private companies to local government. Ireland is going in the opposite direction.

We’ve had alerts from Cork County Council to not use too much water in parts of the county during the seven days, and counting, of glorious heatwave — unusual, given that so much rain fell in the previous nine months and with deep flooding last winter. It is Ireland’s first heatwave in five years and Met Eireann gave out high heat-warning alerts of over 27 degrees daily. It has reached 29 to 30 degrees.

Water conservation seems difficult to do in this country. We don’t have enough and we haven’t built extra reservoirs for our increasing population. After the flooding that hit large areas of Cork City in November 2009, when a few days of exceptionally heavy rain nearly overwhelmed Inniscarra dam’s water capacity, an environmental expert observed that there was no word in the Irish language for ‘planning’. It wasn’t in the traditional Irish mindset. I don’t know if that is true or not.

But during the Celtic Tiger boom of building quickly and making lots of money, some houses and housing estates were built in areas known for flood risks, and residents new to the areas may not have known this until after they bought their homes, which would later be hit by floods. There was a lack of adherence to planning guidelines.

The EU’s policy is that member states are obliged to carry out flood-risk assessments, to develop and implement the management and prevention of floods, if possible, and to publish risk maps.

We can take an ancient example of how Egypt had years of plenty, followed by years of poor harvests. They stored the grain for the lean times to come, and did it as routine.

Ancient Egypt, 2,000 years ago, was well-run on civil service lines. Alexandria was one of its best-run and most beautiful cities, and rightly known as a great wonder of the ancient world.

They had taxes, though, for nearly everything.

Ireland tends to be very slow in managing issues, having taken years to bring in legislation, this summer, to give the medical profession legal clarification in helping women in rare, life-threatening pregnancies in Irish hospitals.

It had to take the unnecessary death of a pregnant young woman in a hospital for this to happen.

M Sullivan

College Rd

Cork