Householders shouldn’t pay for lead pipe fiasco

Last Wednesday (June 10), I attended an individual Irish Water briefing in City Hall, Dublin, which took place instead of the group briefing for all councillors in the North East of the city that was promised on the issue of lead contamination in the water supply in north east Dublin.

While we now have a level of official recognition from the authorities that a problem exists, their response is not to treat it as a major public health issue but rather an individual householder problem. Householders have no responsibility whatsoever for the fact that the local authorities and major construction companies installed lead pipes under their homes decades ago.

So instead of individualising the problem and setting up a whole means testing process for partial assistance which would still be unaffordable to many thousands of householders, we instead need an immediate end to the meter installation programme and a massive diversion of resources and staffing to replace the pipes at no charge to the householder, street by street.