Revealed: Tipperary had huge amount of unplanned water outages over past 18 months

There have been close to 1,000 water outages in county Tipperary in the last 18 months, according to figures released by a county councillor.

Independent Cllr Seamus Morris obtained the figures from Irish Water from January 4, 2021 to July 17, 2022, which show approximately 960 outages, with close to 90% of them being unplanned.

The Nenagh-based councillor has now questioned the logic behind the Government’s decision to rebrand the company as Uisce Éireann.

“Irish Water has been an expensive disaster. Why should Uisce Éireann be any different?” he asked.

Cllr Morris revealed that in the week that the Government decided that Irish Water should be renamed Uisce Éireann, he had received a reply from the company on water disruptions in Tipperary since 2020.

“The reply came to 18 pages of water disruptions over 90% of them being ‘unplanned’ or burst pipes such is the antiquated state of our water Infrastructure in Tipperary,” he said.

Cllr Morris said that since being mandated in 2014 Irish Water had been “an unmitigated disaster” for the people of Tipperary, with not one councillor in the county having nothing but disdain for the company which, he said, was now a real threat to the ability of the county to grow economically.

In a reference to the proposed Eastern and Midland Water Project, he said that Irish Water had recently launched a plan for water services for the country with €8bn of a budget, and €2bn of that - or 25% - was to pipe water to Dublin from Parteen Basin below Lough Derg in a “pointless scheme” to pump 330 million litres of treated water into a city water infrastructure that was leaking at a rate of 300 million litres of treated water into the ground.

Irish Water had a plan to replace just 0.5% of pipes, which was a plan that was doomed before it started, he said.

“The latest name change means that Uisce Éireann will be a company without staff as the 3,130 local authority water staff were insulted with the €3,000 offered to them to move over to work for them,” said Cllr Morris.

He said that his latest enquiries had found that staff will not be taking up the taxpayer-funded offer, so Uisce Éireann will either have no staff or have to hire over 3,000 new staff.

“Another huge issue for Uisce Éireann is that it cannot survive without water charges and they won’t be getting them anytime soon,” warned the councillor.

Cllr Morris asked when will Ireland “cop ourselves on and stop these crazy decisions to waste taxpayer money”.

However, he added that Tipperary’s Government TDs and senator had been “remarkably quiet on this disaster”.

Irish Water has been asked to comment on Cllr Morris’s remarks.