Council to write to Uisce Éireann voicing ‘deep, ongoing frustration’ in Donegal

Donegal County Council will send a letter to Uisce Éireann outlining the “deep, ongoing frustration” of customers in Donegal.

The call to write to the water provider came from Cllr Jack Murray of Inishowen MD after a spate of recent water outages across the county.

The Sinn Féin councillor asked that the council “shares the concerns of those in our communities impacted by regular water outages, calls for greater recruitment of staff in water services, with better working conditions for water staff and a significant increase in investment in our current water infrastructure.

“It’s an opportunity for us, in a unified way, to voice our frustrations with Irish Water,” he said. “The Inishowen district met with Irish Water management recently and all of us voiced our frustration with the situation. 

“As we speak now, Drumfries, just outside Buncrana, is without water. Recently the Illies was without water for three days. Magherabeg and Inch island were without water for five days.”

Cllr Murray emphasised that water outages have forced schools, doctors surgeries and businesses to close.

“One man in Inch had an Airbnb with 10 guests that didn’t have water for five days. He had to pay for a hotel for them which cost thousands of euro.”

Cllr Murray said the situation was “disastrous” and staff morale of Irish Water employees is “on the floor”.

“There’s two members from Inishowen who have left Irish Water to work for the council roads’ staff because they felt it was better working conditions. Irish Water themselves admitted that they’re having difficulty recruiting and I think that is because of working conditions being so poor. 

“There’s been incidents of one member of staff going out to fix a burst with all the heavy machinery that’s involved and I think that’s extremely dangerous. We should all voice our frustrations to Irish Water and the relevant ministers. Ideally, we would abolish Irish Water and services could be brought back to local authorities, but in the absence of that we need significant investment.”

Cllr Gerry McMonagle of Letterkenny-Milford MD seconded the motion.

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“We’re on a knife edge in Letterkenny as it is with the supply of water, although we have a state-of-art water treatment plant,” said Cllr McMonagle. “Many of the villages across the county and smaller towns - where we’re trying to build houses - the infrastructure there is barely supported. What it needs is a massive injection of capital from the government to Uisce Éireann to ensure that our water treatment plants and the supply of fresh, clean water is there.”

Mr Michael McGarvey said that a letter had already been drafted and would be sent to Uisce Éireann “immediately” as the motion was passed.