Water: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Paula Butterly (FG), Louth We have water, water everywhere, except flowing through the pipes and down through the taps in County Louth. I fear I will be very repetitive, like many of my colleagues. As Deputy Barry Ward said about previous speakers, I am about to take the Minister of State on a whistle-stop tour, this time of County Louth. While I recognise that Uisce Éireann committed €28 million to Drogheda last year, the problems are so long and so vast that three minutes is not enough. I will point out the housing growth pressure issue. County Louth is ahead of its social housing targets and the number of private houses is growing at a rapid rate throughout the county. Yet, we see that the infrastructure is not keeping pace with the growth of houses in the county. Constituents' concerns in Dundalk have been treated with what I can only describe as disdain. Following a recent meeting with constituents, serious concerns were again raised about the pump station and the treatment plant. Mount Avenue, Dundalk and Blackrock residents have continuously been in contact with Uisce Éireann and my office to talk about the capacity, or rather the lack of capacity. They do not believe the new developments will be fit for purpose as a result of the service failures. There are chronic failures and delays. Communities across the county continue to face repeated water outages, bursts and wastewater contamination incidents. Without any binding repair timelines, these failures are undermining the confidence in new housing delivery and public services. Worst of all, perhaps, are the prolonged discharges of raw and partially treated wastewater into rivers and coastal waters. The Glyde, the Fane and the Boyne are just a few of the rivers, not to mention the streams, that continue to pose a serious risk to public health and environmental quality. I have raised this issue again and again. As Deputy Barry Ward said of his constituency, when it rains today, tomorrow and the following week, we will see dirty water overflowing and coming down through our rivers and out to the sea. Blackrock residents will not be able to bathe there. We continue to raise these issues but we are not being listened to. --- 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