Fury over ‘pile of garbage’ response from Irish Water

“An absolute load of flippin’ nonsense,” is how a Westmeath County Council member has described the Irish Water response to his claim that nine areas in Westmeath are discharging raw sewage that is making its way to Lough Ennell.

“If ever I saw an answer that meant absolutely nothing only a pile of garbage, it’s this answer from Irish Water,” Cllr Andrew Duncan stated at the November meeting of the Municipal District of Mullingar Kinnegad.

In a question tabled at the meeting, Cllr Duncan had asked that district officials state which of the nine areas discharging sewage were in the Mullingar Kinnegad Municipal District area.

The response to him stated that the Uisce Éireann Local Representative Support Desk had replied stating that it was aware that the matter had been a source of concern for Cllr Duncan and his constituents and that in order to investigate the matter further they had opened a query on the firm’s system on Cllr Duncan’s behalf.

It continued: “As soon as further information becomes available, a member of our team will be in contact with you. Please be advised that we aim to respond to your query as efficiently as possible. It must be noted, however, that due to the complex nature of some of the queries raised, we may require input from various Uisce Éireann departments to obtain full aspects of responses. As you can appreciate, this may extend our response times in certain scenarios.”

Furious at what he described as the “copy and paste” answer, Cllr Duncan said all they were asked for was information on which systems were discharging sewage and they gave, as a reply, “an absolute pile of drivel”.

Cllr Duncan said it was his suspicion that although future-proofed when built, the Mullingar treatment plant is working at full capacity ahead of time. If this were not the case, he said, the raw sewage would not be released untreated.

Director of services Deirdre Reilly informed Cllr Duncan that Uisce Éireann is to attend a meeting of the district early in the new year.