At the November meeting of the Clonmel Borough District, Fianna F\u00e1il councillor Siobh\u00e1n Ambrose tabled a motion requesting that Tipperary County Council write to Uisce \u00c9ireann to express frustration about the level of water outages in the Clonmel area.<\/p>\n
“Any planned works must contain contingency plans to ensure a continuous water supply for the Clonmel area and unfortunately this has not been demonstrated in recent times,\u201d Cllr Ambrose\u2019s motion stated.<\/p>\n
“Furthermore, if these contingency plans require additional resources during this time then they must be put in place seven days a week to ensure continuity in supply as the current situation is just not acceptable,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Speaking in the council chamber, Cllr Ambrose said the situation in Clonmel was \u201cinexcusable\u201d.<\/p>\n
“The primary issue I have is with respect to outages, and the communication for those outages, it is just inexcusable the amount of outages that are occurring at the moment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
“We did have Uisce \u00c9ireann come in and present to us in recent times, and again and again the issue of communication is coming up, but Clonmel has to be, without doubt, the worst area.<\/p>\n
Cllr Ambrose also criticised poor communication and inaccurate restoration times.<\/p>\n
Calling for more maintenance to work on a 24\/7 basis, Cllr Ambrose said that when Tipperary County Council had control of water services, they had staff on call 24\/7.<\/p>\n
“When the council had control of the water services, we had maintenance staff available 24\/7, ready so that if anything happened, the issue was sorted immediately. That is quite clearly not happening with Uisce \u00c9ireann.<\/p>\n
“It particularly seems to be at weekends where the problems arise, so we can only denounce from that that the maintenance crews are only working on a five day week, not seven days a week,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m constantly getting phone calls from businesses, caf\u00e9s, pubs, restaurants, hairdressers, people have to close up, hairdressers have to go home early on a bread and butter day like a Saturday. We\u2019re in a really critical place now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agreeing, Mayor of Clonmel Pat English said that the situation is a \u201cdisaster\u201d for the town.<\/p>\n
“The lack of maintenance at both our plants, they normally seem to go at weekends where there\u2019s no one available until Monday. They say they\u2019re sending out a crew but no one shows up until Monday see what the problem is, but that means our businesses and our shops are without water for the weekend, the busiest time of the week,\u201d he said,<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ve got a letter from a business here in Clonmel who employ 60 people and who are thinking of moving out of Clonmel because of the amount of water outages on a regular basis, it\u2019s really affecting their work, so they\u2019re looking at moving out of Clonmel which would be a disaster for the town,\u201d Cllr English said.<\/p>\n
Councillor Tom Acheson said that the level of boil water notices in the area was \u201coff the Richter scale\u201d. <\/p>\n
“The frequency of the boil water notices in Clonmel lately is just off the Richter scale, businesses and homes all across the town are affected,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging the investment Uisce \u00c9ireann are making in Clonmel, Cllr Acheson said it was hoped that this would improve the situation, but the service from the utility is poor.<\/p>\n
“The service they\u2019re giving and the follow-up is so poor, people are left in limbo as to when their water will be back,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In response, Uisce \u00c9ireann said they take as many steps as possible to minimise disruption to businesses and customers in Clonmel.<\/p>\n
“Uisce \u00c9ireann is making every effort to minimise the duration of any water outages and would like to reassure customers that the resilience of supply overall to the town has improved in recent years.<\/p>\n
“Clonmel town and surrounding areas is currently supplied by three treatment plants; Monroe Water Treatment Plant, Poulavanogue, which is on the EPA\u2019s Remedial Action List, and Glenary Water Treatment Plant. The Poulavanogue and Monroe Water Treatment Plants are supplied by raw water sources which are vulnerable to weather events and heavy rainfall interrupted supply at both plants on different dates in October and November.<\/p>\n
“Uisce \u00c9ireann crews responded, over weekends, to restore water supply as quickly as possible and ongoing upgrade works will significantly improve the overall resilience of water supply with all current projects expected to be delivered in 2026,\u201d a statement for the company said.<\/p>\n
The water utility say that they regularly engage with elected representatives, and value their feedback.<\/p>\n
“Uisce \u00c9ireann regularly engage with and update local elected representatives and value their ongoing feedback on our services and their role in sharing information via their own social media channels.<\/p>\n
“We held an in-person workshop with elected members of Tipperary County Council at the Council Chambers in Nenagh on October 14 last providing an update on our work to improve water services in Clonmel and taking any feedback on board in relation to our communications,\u201d the company added.<\/p>\n
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the November meeting of the Clonmel Borough District, Fianna F\u00e1il councillor Siobh\u00e1n Ambrose tabled a motion requesting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,10668,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-176156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-katie-odonovan","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}