Water Services Dail Éireann — 2026-07-14 ============================================================ Michael Cahill (FF), Kerry I call on the Minister for housing and local government to intervene in a most urgent matter in County Kerry where subcontractors to Uisce Éireann are being left to wait for two, three or four months without being paid for work that has been carried out. This is not acceptable. These delayed payments mean subcontractors are unable to pay wages or for diesel due to cash flow problems. This is happening right across my county in Tralee, Dingle, Killarney, east Kerry, Killorglin and Kenmare. In every corner of Kerry, this is happening as we speak. It is disgraceful carry-on by Uisce Éireann. It is not acceptable. Will the Minister of State request the Minister for housing to intervene to ensure contractors are paid within a reasonable timeframe especially after submitting their invoices? They should be paid within two weeks at the most. This is inexcusable. It must be addressed immediately. Contractors and subcontractors to Uisce Éireann are experiencing unacceptable delays. There are huge issues with issuing purchase orders, POs - orders are issued weekly and often contractors wait two months to get PO. Another big issue is when invoices are submitted to payables, it seems it is a central invoicing email address dealing with this and they are not uploaded to the system for processing, causing further delays. These are all internal Uisce Éireann issues. When invoices are not processed, the spin-off effect is delayed payment. Local engineers have informed me that this is all removed from them, it is centralised and they have no contact details for anyone to help as payments are not received. On contacting payables by email, contractors are told invoices were not processed or picked up from the previous Monday and there is no payment on the Friday. Furthermore, there is no payment run at the end of the month, which means contractors are waiting another couple of weeks which has been the case. I am aware of one contractor who was informed today that he will eventually be paid on 17 July for works carried out last March. This is not good enough and has to be addressed. These people cannot continue in business this way. I plead with the Minister of State to ask the Minister for housing and local government to simplify the whole process. What is happening needs to be addressed. It is bordering on criminal. Will the Minister of State please request that Uisce Éireann addresses this incompetence in its payment systems and work with contractors to address these issues? Payments were always slow but have gotten so delayed that subcontractors are unable to pay wages or pay for fuel, etc., due to cash flow problems caused solely by Uisce Éireann. In regard to these delayed payments, there is a way of addressing the issue. It is in everyone's interests to address this matter as soon as possible. --- 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/2026-07-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-14