Water: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Naoise Ó Cearúil (FF), Kildare North

It feels a bit like Groundhog Day here today. In February of last year, in one of my first contributions to this House, I spoke about water outages in Kildare North. Indeed, I had a Topical Issue on the very same issue in June of last year. I hate to admit the greater Dublin area, in relation to Kildare, is growing. Maynooth, Leixlip, Celbridge, Kilcock and Clane are under severe pressure when it comes to electricity, connections of new estates and water infrastructure. In particular with the water infrastructure for those people living in those towns at the moment, it is extremely common to have outages. In my time as a county councillor - I was a county councillor for ten and a half years - it felt like it was my job to communicate with the public that there was a water outage. I would turn up on a site at two o’clock in the morning with water bursting out of a main road. I would get on to the fire service, the council and Uisce Éireann to try to get it resolved. That was not my role as a county councillor, and it is certainly not my role as a TD either. I am more than happy to step into the breach and help the public as much as possible but Uisce Éireann is failing in its duty to communicate with the public. We see this time and again.
For example, Carton Grove, an estate in Maynooth, lost water two days ago. I communicated with Uisce Éireann that we needed action on the ground and it told me there were teams on site. There were no teams on site. It took more than 24 hours to get the issue resolved. What we are dealing with here, with housing estates in particular, are young families and people with disabilities who need access to water. Having certainty of access to water is critical. If there are planned outages, people can live with that but what we are not seeing from Irish Water and what we need to see more of, is how it communicates with the public. I ask that Irish Water improves its public communications, particularly in isolated areas where there are outages, planned and unplanned.
I give credit to Irish Water for some of the schemes it is doing, such as the water supply project in the eastern midlands region, the Crodaun wastewater network upgrade in Celbridge, and the Maynooth water main replacement leakage reduction programme focused particularly on Old Greenfield and that side of the town.
What needs to happen here is real-time communication and also clear restoration timelines. People need to have an idea how much water to buy when they go to the supermarket because the supply is going to be gone for a particular amount of time. People need that certainty and I ask the Minister of State to bring it back to Irish Water that we actually communicate more effectively with the public.

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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