Water: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
============================================================

Louis O'Hara (SF), Galway East

Communities across the State, particularly rural communities, are paying the price for decades of underinvestment in our water and wastewater infrastructure. This leads to issues in terms of public health, the environment and particularly housing. A total of 70% of the land that is zoned for housing in County Galway cannot be built on because of infrastructural deficits, including water and wastewater. We see big announcements in terms of funding but we do not see delivery on the ground. Funding was announced three years ago for the provision of wastewater infrastructure in Clarinbridge and Craughwell in County Galway. Since then, these projects have been at a standstill. The costs have gone up. Before Christmas, we saw Government TDs welcoming an increase of funding for the project. However, the Government still has not addressed the main barrier to delivering these projects, which is a requirement that Galway County Council provides matched funding of several million euro. If the project goes over budget, the local authority would have to cover the costs. Galway County Council does not have this money. It has not budgeted for it. The investment will not generate any financial return for the council either. It will be handed over to Uisce Éireann once the project is completed. How can the county council be expected to foot this bill for millions?
I have raised this matched funding requirement with the Minister, Deputy Chambers, a number of times. I still have not received an answer on it. It seems like penny pinching by the Government. This needs to be sorted because it is holding up these projects which are so badly needed. This is having such an impact on the people of Craughwell and Clarinbridge, the local environment and housing. How are we going to solve the housing crisis if we cannot get basic things like this right? I ask the Minister to address this. We need this cofunding requirement to be taken away to ensure that these projects can finally get moving. Not to mention the dozens of other towns and villages across County Galway where there is the same lack of adequate wastewater infrastructure but no funding has been forthcoming, which I have raised here on a number of occasions. This includes the likes of Corofin, Abbeyknockmoy, Ardrahan and Monivea. We are still waiting for the Mountbellew scheme to progress. We need to see funding forthcoming. We need to get delivery of these projects right too.

---

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