Water: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Denise Mitchell (SF), Dublin Bay North

We have had years of underinvestment in water, electricity and public transport. One thing annoys people no end: listening to Government Ministers boast about how well the economy is doing when basic services that should be world-class are in a state of despair. On the broader issues of water and repairs, I will give Irish Water some credit. Its communications for upcoming planned works have improved but in terms of outages, problems with supplies and identifying where repairs need to happen, the delays are just unacceptable.
I could stand here like other Deputies and give the Minister of State loads of examples from my constituency, but I have decided to give just one. At Charlemont Lane in Clontarf, residents have had an issue with discolouration in their water since last October. Irish Water did the testing. There were high levels of metals in the water and some do-not-consume notices were issued. Irish Water, in fairness, did communicate with residents and myself, but the issue is that the actual problem still has not been fixed. Residents are understandably frustrated because they cannot get a timeline for when this work will be done. I understand it can take time to identify the source of a problem, but we are now three months on and this is just a small street.
Expanding and repairing water infrastructure and the sewerage system needs to be a top priority if we want to be able to address the challenges we are facing in this State, but I warn the Government against using these problems with our water infrastructure to try to reintroduce water charges by the back door with an excessive use charge. If it wants to deal with water being wasted, it should fix the pipes because a third of the water goes into the ground before it even hits the tap.

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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