Irish Examiner view: Services on brink of collapse
Uisce Éireann has a €10.2bn, five-year investment plan to achieve water and wastewater compliance and replace ageing and failing assets. Picture: iStock
In fact, his words will have grated with those tens of thousands of householders, business owners, and farmers across the country who, as we highlighted in Monday's paper, have been living under "boil water" notices for years or have been affected by necessary maintenance work on the system.
And, like the aftermath of storms Dara and Éowyn when there was a sudden realisation across the country that we, as a nation, were completely unprepared for these or other natural disasters, there is now a growing apprehension that our ancient water system is no longer fit for purpose.
Mr Grant himself pointed to the “extraordinary complacency” and “passive indifference” to investment in water infrastructure which has dogged the network for decades.
That collective failure to either understand the depth of the problems or do anything to rectify it, is already costing the country dear.
The development of water services across the country needs to be addressed fast — and particularly so if the Government's ambition of 50,000 new homes annually is to be met. As it is, Dublin is running out of options quickly and if anything happens to the single pipe that serves the capital from the Ballymore Eustace water treatment plant in Kildare, chaos is guaranteed.
Sure, the scheme to source water for Dublin from the Shannon basin is radical and foresighted, but it is going to take at least another decade to complete. So too the situation in Cork City, where the 300km of cast iron pipes distributing water across the city is old and truculent and will have to be replaced in its entirety.
It is a similar situation in cities, towns, and villages across the country, not to mention those rural areas where supply and demand are constant issues for many.
Uisce Éireann does have a €10.2bn, five-year investment plan to achieve water and waste water compliance and replace ageing and failing assets, as well as building resilience into the system. Whatever about the sum of money it has at its disposal, the timescale being allowed for the work seems unrealistic and far-fetched.
Water is our lifeblood and the Government must seize the moment and begin a co-ordinated and finely tuned action plan to right decades of wrong.
Life for Nancy McCarrick, since March 26, 1992, when her daughter Annie vanished, has been one of pain, anxiety, and a sure knowledge that those charged with finding her had made a litany of errors in their investigations.
Since Annie’s disappearance was upgraded to a murder case two years ago and a new investigating team appointed, numerous accepted facts about the case have proven to have been a false narrative, and vital leads given by her family were ignored.
The lack of closure for Nancy and her family has been heartbreaking in the extreme and their bitterness, anger, and frustration are perfectly understandable. So too the families of other missing women who vanished without trace in the months and years after Annie went missing such as Jo-Jo Dullard, Fiona Pender, and Deirdre Jacob, all of whom, like Annie, disappeared in Ireland’s so-called Vanishing Triangle.
Nancy McCarrick goes to Mass daily to pray for news that will break the 33-year cycle of pain in which she has existed. She prays, too, that positive news will emerge in each of the other cases of missing women.
We can only hope her prayers are answered.
It may be April 1, a date associated with spoof news stories and tall yarns aimed at causing mirth and confusion in equal measure, but with Donald Trump as US president it should come as no surprise that he is “not joking” about seeking an unconstitutional third term in the Oval Office.
Interviewed at the weekend, the US president said with typical ambivalence that “a lot of people” wanted him to serve a third term and suggested there were ways and means of securing this aim.
To do so would run afoul of the 22nd Amendment of the US constitution which states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.” His weekend interview, however, disabused the notion that he was only jesting about such a move. “No, no, I’m not joking,” he said, adding that there were “methods which you could do it”.
Having already likened himself to a king, shown affinity to autocratic leaders, and displayed governance tactics which constitutional experts and historians reckon is close to authoritarianism, it is a certainty he is not kidding about a third term. When he assumed office as America’s 47th president in January, he committed himself under oath to “faithfully execute” his role and to “preserve, protect, and defend” the constitution of the US.
As he is already plummeting the country towards a constitutional crisis because he and his supporters have taken so many steps to circumvent the constraints placed by the constitution on his executive authority – not to mention a level of expansionism not seen since his predecessor Andrew McKinley — it seems the trivial matter of a third term will not be thwarted.
That he has left nobody guessing about his desire to enjoy a level of independent authority similar to that exercised by leaders in China and Russia and wishes for nothing less than federal ignorance of his peoples’ health and education requirements, should be deeply worrying for the citizens of his country.
It is to be hoped, therefore, that the Federal and Supreme Court judges remain true to their obligation to uphold a constitution their president seems determined to shatter.
