A new report says significant failures in oversight and management by Irish Water and local authorities last year put the health of the 885,000 people served by the Gorey and Ballymore-Eustace water treatment plants at risk.
According to the latest Environmental Protection Agency report, the quality of public drinking water supplies in Ireland remains high, with more than 99.7% compliance with bacterial and chemical limits.
The agency said this is positive for consumers and indicates that the water is safe to drink.
However, it said many water supplies are not as resilient as they need to be, including those serving 316,000 people in Cork city, Limerick city, Wexford town, and Kildare - all of which are currently on the remedial action list.
The EPA said the length of time it is taking Irish Water to address such issues is unacceptable.
The report references issues in Dungarvan, where remedial action is to be delayed for a further five years; at Galtee Regional, which has been on the list for remedial action since 2019, yet still has no date for completion; and at Clonmel-Poulavanogue, which has already been waiting for remedial action for 14 years, but still will not be fixed for another four years.
This Drinking Water Quality Report also highlights a continued risk to the supplies for another 570,000 people served by the 57 water supplies on the latest Remedial Action List.
The EPA said high incidences of boil water notices will remain until Irish Water improves the resilience of drinking water plants.
Significantly too, it takes aim at Irish Water for the slow pace of lead pipe replacement, saying it will take almost a quarter of a century to address the risks posed to public health from lead in drinking water at the replacement rate observed in 2021.
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Margaret Attridge, Asset Operations Manager at Irish Water, has said the EPA and the HSE were notified as soon as the issues at Gorey and Ballymore Eustace were escalated to Irish Water.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Ms Attridge said efforts were made to rectify the situation locally and action was taken as soon as the matter was escalated.
She said Irish Water is ultimately responsible for public health from all water that is supplied from its treatment plants.
"On that particular case there was a weather event on the day that interfered with signal so there wasn’t visibility of the plant performance past site level," she said.
"Hence the issue was never escalated past site level," she added.
Ms Attridge said the situation was rectified on site but "it just took a little bit longer than we would have liked and it resulted in some non-compliant water getting into the supply".
"We take this very, very seriously and we have been working hard over the last year to make sure that this does not reoccur on any of our other sites," she said.
Ms Attridge said their technical specialist teams have been attending sites to support plant operators so that they can provide additional assistance in the event of an issue occurring.
In relation to the delay in Dungarvan, she said there are planning and other statutory legislative requirements that they have to go through, but there are plans in place to deal with the situation.
She said it will "take time" to go through the process, get statutory approvals in place and go through a tendering and construction period.
On the issue of lead-pipe replacement, Ms Attridge said there are about 180,000 lead service connections, of which they have replaced 48,000.
She said it is important to note that a "significant proportion" is private going through people's gardens and into their houses.
She said there is a Government grant available for people to replace private connections but there has been "very, very little" uptake.
Main findings of the EPA report
- The quality of drinking water from public supplies remains high, with over 99.7% of samples compliant with bacterial and chemical limits.
- Two significant incidents during 2021 at the Gorey and Ballymore Eustace water treatment plants put the health of approximately 885,000 people at risk, highlighting significant failings in oversight and management by Irish Water.
- The number of supplies breaching chemical standards (trihalomethanes) increased in 2021, reversing all progress seen in recent years.
- Progress to remove lead from drinking water networks is too slow, with the need for stronger leadership at national level. If the current pace of lead pipe replacement continues the overall programme will take 20 longer than originally planned to complete.
- The number of people served by 'at-risk' supplies on the EPA's Remedial Action List (RAL) reduced in 2021 arising from upgrade works at two large water supplies: Leixlip and Vartry water treatment plants.
- However, since the end of last that trend has reversed with another 200,000 people affected after key supplies in Limerick City and Kildare were added to the remedial Action list.
- There were two significant incidents during 2021 at the Gorey and Ballymore Eustace water treatment plants that put the health of approximately 885,000 people at risk, with community illness and hospitalisations occurring in the Gorey incident.
- These highlighted significant failings in oversight and management by Irish Water and local authorities.
- The Environmental Protection Agency instructed Irish Water to improve monitoring and protection. Further drinking water quality issues were detected as a result leading to a significant increase in Boil Water Notices in the last quarter of 2021.
- 70 boil water notices and 26 water restrictions were in place in 2021, affecting almost 230,000 people.
- 29 of those boil water notices were in place for more than 30 days, meaning they are classed as long-term notices requiring investment in infrastructure to address.
