Water: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo That is really good because it is unusual for Mayo to be first. I wish to talk about the situation with water in County Mayo and, in particular, with group water schemes. Let me be very clear: the people in Mayo are just as important as the people living anywhere else in this State. I know the Minister and the Minister of State will agree with that. They have a right to water, a right to clear running water, and a right to access water 24-7. I want to talk first about homes in areas like Glensaul in Toormakeady, in Craggagh near Balla and in parts of north Mayo where there are clusters of fewer than 25 houses. The rules for funding exclude them from getting a water supply. That is just not right. This is a weakness in the system and the criteria must be relaxed. Funding must be provided so that Mayo County Council can get on with the work and the households can get on with their lives. I ask the Minister and Minister of State to listen to what I am saying because I am providing them with solutions. I do not want to be standing up here again in front of them speaking about water in Mayo. The second thing I want addressed is the eight schemes in Mayo that are waiting at the moment - there are others in the pipeline - to be taken in charge by Uisce Éireann. Six of them have not been taken in charge because of debt. Some of them have been with Uisce Éireann for the past seven years. Uisce Éireann will not take over one of these schemes because it is being fed by another scheme with leak issues. Debts on these schemes have mounted up over the years, through nobody's fault. With the pipes deteriorating and leaks happening, the volunteers and the households in the scheme cannot be held to ransom over these leaks. Can the Minister get Uisce Éireann to write off the debts, take over the schemes and just get on with it? These debts are going to be there for 100 years. They are not going to be paid by anyone; they cannot be paid by anyone. We need flexibility between the local authority and the Department to find and execute solutions. I commend the rural water section in Mayo County Council on its work. Indeed, Michael McDermott, who has just left that division, did excellent work too. There are just not enough of staff members to do what needs to be done for the delivery of water in the county. I know there is an emergency staffing request in and I am absolutely certain that every elected representative in the county will support this request. It would be unthinkable that unspent money would be clawed back by the Department at the end of the year just because we do not have sufficient staff in the water section to deliver the projects. I welcome that Mayo County Council has been selected as the pilot county for the new-look multi-annual rural water programme, MARWP, which starts in June next year, but without the necessary staff, this work cannot be done. Has the Minister done comparisons between the counties to ascertain how many schemes have been taken in charge in each county? I think he will find that Mayo is hovering the bottom there, so that needs to be looked at. I will sum up my requests for today. I ask the Minister to allow flexibility in the funding criteria to allow for all households to have a water supply, get Irish Water to formally take over the schemes presented by Mayo County Council, get Irish Water to write off the debts run up because of neglected infrastructure----- --- 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/2026-01-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-21