Water an election issue for Gort

By Cian McCormack
Morning Ireland

Today we made it to Co Galway, and our first stop was Gort.

There local traders have decided that enough is enough, and they’ve just erected a sign on the town’s edge apologising to visitors about the lack of public toilets, the poor state of the roads, and the colour and the quality of the drinking water.

Chatting to people in the town, it’s clear that there is a lot of anger about this issue.
One woman told us she buys in bottles of water for her local business. ‘I won’t drink that ‘auld water,’ she said. ‘So how could I expect my customers to?’

Ironically if you do risk drinking too much water in the town and if you’re just visiting, you could be left looking around for ‘somewhere to spend a penny’ because the local toilet in the town has been shut down.

What does this mean for the local elections? Well, they’ve already had two pubic meetings with candidates and are looking for guarantees that their problems will be solved.

Saying that, the local candidates we talked to said the issue will be resolved soon because the funding is there.

Again the local issues are dominating here not the national ones, but saying that they are lurking in the background.

Galway City was our next stop, but the Volvo Ocean race is more visible that the local elections.

There’s a lack of political postering, except for one or two parties that have braved decorating Eyre Square.

But from what we’ve seen so far, this type of politics is local.