Michael Moynihan: Uisce Éireann’s silence on Cork’s water crisis is an insult to the public
Brown water in Ballyvolane, Cork. It is hard to believe that a community in the middle of the second-largest city in the country cant be provided with clean, drinkable water.
One of your columnist’s favourite comfort reads is a classic from the mid-sixties, by Walter Macken.
A quick synopsis: Donn Donnshleibhe returns to his remote village in the west of Ireland after the Second World War and tries to modernise the place. Shenanigans ensue.
Donn starts by proposing electrification for the village. Some of the locals aren’t interested, but at a meeting to discuss the matter he nudges the debate his way when he mentions the ESB.
“ ‘... I was talking to them. They don't like coming back. We gave ye a chance before, they said, and you wouldn't take it. There's thousands of people all over the country dying for it. Why should we bother our heads about the people of Mountain?’
“That stirred McNulty. ‘Who the hell do they think they are?' he asked. 'Aren't they our servants? If we say: We want light, they better come running with light or we'll talk a different language to them. Not,' he went on hastily, 'that I'm for the light. I'm just saying that if we want it we'll get it and to hell with them!’”
Mr McNulty’s view of a public utility may surprise us now, but going by Eoin English’s report in these pages last week we might take a leaf from his book.
“Uisce Éireann officials are due to meet city officials next Wednesday,” Eoin wrote (meaning yesterday, March 19).
“They are not available to attend a special public meeting the following day, called specifically to discuss the city's ongoing discoloured water problem.”
Eoin went on to quote Fine Gael councillor Shane O’Callaghan as saying the refusal by the chief executive and management of Uisce Éireann to attend the meeting was “totally unacceptable”, adding: "On several occasions, Cork City Council have asked for them to attend a meeting to answer questions regarding the management of water services in our City and they have repeatedly refused to do so.
"Their latest refusal to attend the meeting on March 20 is yet another slap in the face to the people of Cork, particularly those residents who have had to deal with filthy, brown water coming out of their taps or their water being turned off without sufficient notice . . . “
Green Party councillor Oliver Moran chipped in: “There are incidents of raw sewage spilling onto public roads.
“When Cork City Council wrote to the minister about these issues, he wrote back to us saying he has no operational say over Uisce Éireann ... The EPA and the Commission for Regulation of Utilities don't appear to have any grip on them. They won't come before councillors like any other state body would, so who are they responsible to?"
Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gould said: “The people of Cork deserve answers and they deserve accountability. Uisce Éireann are hiding from this because they know they are failing the people of the northside and everyone supplied by the Lee Road treatment centre.” Suffice to say there was cross-party consensus on this one.
An observation or two.
I’ve written here before about Uisce Éireann and its performance in Cork. The river spillages around the county, such as the one that killed thousands of fish in north Cork last year. The flooding down around the Monahan Road a few weeks back. The ongoing shambles with drinking water in the city — in areas such as Mount Farran in particular — where household taps yield an undrinkable fluid day after day.
The last time I wrote about this matter I noted that it seemed hard to believe that a community in the middle of the second-largest city in the country couldn’t be provided with clean, drinkable water.
Now it seems that the public representatives of that community in the second-largest city in the country can’t be provided with an explanation for the lack of clean, drinkable water.
Just in case it needs to be spelt out: that isn’t good enough.
If that means some searching questions and some awkward answers, so be it. That is one of the reasons the management of the utility company are in place, after all, to explain what the organisation is doing. If you enlist you must drill, and all that.
Last September we learned that bonus payments to staff at Uisce Éireann increased by 17% to €10.57m, according to its annual report for 2023. The report showed that that €10.57m in performance-related pay was a €1.4m increase on the performance-related payouts of €9.17m for 2022.
Why yes, you read that correctly. Performance-related: meaning that the performances of those working in Uisce Éireann are seen as deserving a bonus, and that its performance was better last year than the year before, despite the litany of errors.
That report also revealed, by the way, that in 2023 344 employees earned €100,000 or more. That figure represents an increase of 27%, or 73 people, in that particular pay bracket in 2022. A pity none of those 344 employees had a clause in their contracts about answering reasonable questions about water quality.
To be fair, Uisce Éireann does not have a bad relationship with every local authority. On the company’s own website there’s an effusive tribute to its partnership with Dublin City Council in a project replacing old pipes in the capital.
According to the utility’s website, “Uisce Éireann and Dublin City Council's joint collaborative effort was key to the successful delivery of this essential project.” Duly noted.
Incidentally, representatives of the utility were to meet Cork City Council officials yesterday, but they couldn’t meet councillors today. Uisce Éireann had scheduled a workshop for Cork councillors to be held today, but that was cancelled when the councillors decided to have a special meeting.
Uisce Éireann could facilitate a workshop to provide updates and information to councillors today but couldn't attend a meeting with councillors today?
One final point which may have occurred to Leeside readers. Most people can identify the City Hall pretty quickly — the way it looms over the quayside makes it an unmistakable landmark.
Not as many people may be aware that the local Uisce Éireann office is across Eglinton Street from Cork City Hall. Literally. You could shout from one building and be heard in the other.
Yet Uisce Éireann management can’t walk across the road to meet councillors.
There’s something so symbolic about this that it’s almost too on the nose, the kind of conceit a bad novelist would come up with.
Not Walter Macken, of course. In his novel the ESB provides the power with no great fuss.
Mind you, the villagers in the book end up providing their own water supply. Maybe that was a sign.
