No water was 'a calamity' during busy weekend in Tipperary

Ongoing problems with Clonmel’s water supply meant that most of the town centre was left without water on the weekend of the town’s Busking Festival, “a calamity” that was unacceptable.

That was the message delivered to Irish Water by angry members of Clonmel Borough District at their monthly meeting.

Cllr. Pat English said there was a problem on Thursday but it was Monday before the supply was fully restored during the Busking Festival. Shops had to close, businesses were out of pocket and visitors had to return home.

In the past they had a dedicated caretaker in each of the water plants, which ensured they were monitored at all times, and it was essential that they got back to where they were. When there was a problem before, the council staff were called straight away and the situation wasn’t left for three or four days, as was the case now. 

Cllr. English said that such outages happened on numerous occasions since Irish Water had taken over responsibility for the supply. It was a question of maintaining and upgrading the plants at Poulavanogue and Glenary, and they should make a complaint to Irish Water.

Cllr. Niall Dennehy said that Irish Water could put a spin on the situation and refer to an Act of God or lightning strikes, but the dogs in the street knew that a lack of maintenance had caused the problem.

“The whole water issue should be taken back into our (the council’s) hands”, he said.

Cllr. Michael Murphy said they had all dealt with “the calamity” that existed on the weekend of the Busking Festival. 

He had met many shop owners who were left without water and the lack of communication from Irish Water was unacceptable. They wouldn’t have received any information had it not been for the council officials at local level.

It was also unacceptable that hotels, cafes, restaurants and hairdressers were left without water on a busy weekend. 

He said that a lot of this could have been avoided if there was preventative maintenance at source. An amount of foliage had blocked many outlets in the water plants but it was known that bad weather was on the way.

An assurance should be given that systems were in place to ensure there was no reoccurance of this problem during Orange Weather alerts.

Cllr. Siobhan Ambrose said that no lessons had been learned, because if we have heavy rain next weekend the water will be gone again.She said it wasn’t good enough when you had no water to flush toilets, prepare food or do the washing.

“The service isn’t good enough and the communication aspect isn’t good enough”, she stated, adding that it was “a nightmare” for councillors when there were water outages. 

If there was an outage on Friday it wouldn’t be sorted until Monday morning, and it was time that people got answers. 

District Mayor Garret Ahearn agreed that the situation was totally unacceptable, and it always seemed to happen on weekends that were extremely busy. 

Businesses faced enough challenges without having to deal with a lack of water. Since Irish Water had been established their awareness of a looming crisis had worsened. 

He said it was important to get some clarity and reassurances for businesses in the town centre.

Director of Services Sean Keating agreed that what happened over the Busking Festival weekend was totally unacceptable. 

Arrangements for weekends had been under discussion with Irish Water for a number of years, and he was disappointed that some arrangements didn’t kick in an awful lot sooner than they did on the Busking Festival weekend.

For more Tipperary news read Cost of building new hotel on former Clonmel Arms site is being assessed