Irish Water to begin to take full control of Louth water management early next year

At July's monthly meeting of Louth County Council Fianna Fail councillor John Sheridan queried whether the move to take the pumping station at Cavanhill in Knockbridge marked the beginning of other water maintenance duties moving back to the council’s remit?

“The next big project I know we’re all focused on is the Greenmount project and I know we’d have a lot more confidence with Louth County Council doing the work, I know locally its Louth County Council people that I get the most response from and the impediments put in by Irish Water for the most basic of connections is unbelievable and I’d follow support a move back."

In reply Chief Executive Joan Martin said that this was “absolutely not” the case and that she expected the council to be “entirely out of water” sometime in the early part of next year if not sooner.

“There's agreement at a national level and the move is to not only not to renew SLAs (Service Level Agreement) but to end the current round of SLAs ahead of schedule.

“So I would expect Irish Water to be entirely taking over on a gradual basis over months, probably in the early part of next year taking over staffing and then taking over everything fairly quickly.

“I'd imagine that we could be in the first run of councils to transition entirely over to Irish Water and that our involvement in water services, apart from a small involvement in rural water services, will end completely, despite no actual time frame, sooner rather than later.”