North Louth residents hit with seventh water outage since June
Residents in Shelagh outside Dundalk hit with seventh water outage since June
Residents in Shelagh last week endured their seventh water outage since the middle of June after an emptying reservoir and problems with a generator cut water to the taps, Louth Sinn Féin TD Ruairí Ó Murchú has said.
The latest situation arose on Tuesday evening last when residents in the area contacted Uisce Éireann to say there was no water in their taps.
It was later revealed that this was due to no water at the Dunbin reservoir, which also serves Knockbridge and Kilkerley, and homeowners in Shelagh were particularly badly hit because they are ‘at the end of the line’.
According to Deputy Ó Murchú, the pumps at Callan’s pub at Hackballscross will only work when the water levels are high enough, meaning that it was late on Thursday afternoon before proper service was resumed for some Shelagh residents.
Work to make the pumps easier to maintain at Hilltop, which feed the Dunbin reservoir were ongoing, and a generator added to the issue when there was a system reboot failure.
Deputy Ó Murchú said that action was not taken soon enough when local people contacted Uisce Éireann, and according to the Dundalk TD, it is estimated that the latest outage affected around 3,500 people.
Deputy Ó Murchú said the situation is “completely unacceptable, particularly because people don’t believe Uisce Éireann can guarantee the system and residents are very concerned that this will happen again”.
The Sinn Féin TD said he had raised the Shelagh water issue ‘multiple times’ in Leinster House and, during last week’s outage, contacted the Chief Executive of Uisce Éireann, as well as the water network operations manager, on-site employees, as well a communications officer and a senior official from the organisation, asking them to ensure that people were informed as to what has gone wrong the last period and what is being done to resolve it.
Deputy Ó Murchú said he had been advised that Uisce Éireann is working to identify alternative water supplies for Shelagh as well as an upgrade to the pumping system and improvements to the monitoring and alarm system to the reservoir.
He said: “People don’t trust the system and will draw off it when they do have water, that is the natural thing to do. Families, particularly those with small children, were badly affected, as well as farmers who were trying to water their livestock.
“How is this happening in Louth in 2026? How can people be without water for almost 48 hours in the middle of a heatwave? Uisce Éireann has to prioritise the work that is needed in Shelagh to ensure that this never happens again”.