Water Services Dail Éireann — 2026-04-28 ============================================================ Aidan Farrelly (SD), Kildare North I thank the Minister of State for being here this evening to take this question. I appreciate that. The Minister of State will not need me to tell him that the people of Kildare and the eastern region are sincerely sick and tired of waking up to dry taps. In Kildare, in particular, we have had such consistent outages over the past number of weeks and months in many different areas that frustration is really at boiling pint at this stage. For context, we saw in the census very recently that Kildare's population 100 years ago was 50,000-odd people. Fast-forward 100 years and it is nearly over 250,000 at this stage. It is the fastest growing county in the country. That population has doubled in 30 years. We have had huge population growth, but I cannot understate the impact that has had on the services, most specifically when it comes to water. It is really having an enormous impact on people's lives. We had a nice few days last week with a bit of sunshine. People woke up on Sunday morning to hear that in 24 hours, with no notice, Allenwood reservoir had run dry. A lot of pockets of these same communities only four, six and eight weeks ago were told there is a risk of planned flooding because the reservoirs were too high. It seems that we cannot deal with too much water and we cannot deal with too little water. My worry and my analysis keep bringing me to this point: where is the political accountability or oversight here? My concern is that without direct involvement at ministerial level, the utility is missing some sort of accountability. We have had it before the Committee of Public Accounts. We have had really thorough and robust engagement with the representatives. However, that is a very rare opportunity for political questioning. As a TD, as any Member of this House will know, if we put a question to the Minister for housing who has ultimate responsibility, the first line of every parliamentary reply is that water is not his responsibility. The Minister of State has been here as a councillor. He knows all too well the number of queries or contacts a county councillor will get about water, whether it is planned outages, unplanned outages or capital works. People go to the authority or the local authority and they say it is not their problem either. TDs cannot get answers from a Minister and councillors cannot get answers from the local authority and so people go to the rep desk. I am sure it will be part of the Minister of State's response that the rep desk is there but if he has used it, he will know that you will wait weeks upon weeks for an answer that ultimately does not ask. Really, it goes beyond what is acceptable in terms of any sort of real, thorough engagement. I am asking with great sincerity tonight, not just for Kildare at all, although it is significantly felt in Kildare, but right across the region. Is there an appetite within the Minister of State, the Department or with Government colleagues to further increase political accountability and oversight here? I accept that many bodies are established to allow a set of professionals, in this instance, Uisce Éireann, to get on with the work and to escape any sort of political influence. That is laudable. However, the Comptroller and Auditor General and many others have noted that Uisce Éireann is quite specific in its set-up. We know the origins of that. My worry is there is a lack of strategy here, a lack of oversight and a lack of transparency within which political representatives, whether they be councillors, Senators or TDs, can get access to timely information. I look forward to the Minister of State's reply. I sincerely emphasise that piece with regard to Kildare. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-28