Fingal County Council members have called on Uisce Éireann to step up and improve water services in Fingal.
At a Thursday (May 8) meeting of the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords area committee, councillors from both government and opposition parties have expressed frustration that Uisce Éireann are not engaging with Fingal County Council.
A motion, put forward by Labour councillor Corina Johnston, called for a meeting between council officials and Uisce Éireann to discuss how residents from Corballis and Balcarrick can be connected to the existing Donabate and Portrane foul water scheme.
“The difficulty here is that these residents are looking to get connections to these mains, and it seems there is a hefty cost to this. I’m looking to meet Uisce Éireann, along with my colleagues, so we can sort this issue once and for all; we need an understanding on this.”
She noted that a pumping station was installed in Donabate on the condition that it had sufficient capacity to serve houses in Corballis and Balcarrick.
Per the Rush-Lusk councillor, this has not happened, and residents from Corballis and Balcarrick are not connected to the foul water scheme which serves the wider Donabate and Portrane areas.
Johnston’s motion inspired other councillors to express overall frustration with the poor services provided by Uisce Éireann across Fingal.
Johnston’s Labour colleague Brendan Ryan has expressed frustration that “this motion is a motion on top of several other motions over the last year to try and get Uisce Éireann to come in and talk to us; there has to be a determination in Fingal County Council to solve this.”
“For the last few years, we’ve been looking to meet with Uisce Éireann,” the Balbriggan councillor noted, but implied that there is no appetite within Fingal County Council management to be proactive and seek out a meeting with Uisce Éireann instead of waiting for councillors to raise the issue.
Independent councillor Cathal Boland “Uisce Éireann are just not working. They are failing to deliver the fundamentals which are required.”
“It’s not a question of planning or a question of land, it’s a question of service, and Uisce Éireann has failed miserably in the delivery of services.”
Boland noted that rural villages in Fingal are “fundamentally ignored” and that more needs to be done.
“If the services aren’t there, we can’t do our job; we need to hammer home to them over and over again that there is a need for them to get their finger out and deliver the services. We need that message to be driven home,” the Rush-Lusk councillor said.
Independents4Change councillor Dean Mulligan remarked “it is impossible or takes a ridiculous amount of time to get an answer from Uisce Éireann and the answer you usually get is ‘thank you, we’ll seek further clarifcation and get back to you’”.
“We really do need to talk about the infrastructure and how it hasn’t been addressed in a real way,” and said that overall government planning laws need to change.
“We haven’t worked appropriately with these bodies (such as Uisce Éireann), which should statutorily be involved in all communications for planning and development. Until that happens, we are always going to be on the backfoot,” the Swords councillor said.
Independent Darren Jack Kelly said “why can’t these people (Uisce Éireann) come in here and talk to us face to face?”
The Swords councillor accused Uisce Éireann of being “evasive,” and it was the job of Fingal County Council to pin them down and give them a straight answer.
Fine Gael councillor Luke Corkery told the meeting that 40 new houses in Knocksedan are yet to be connected to water mains, and that residents have been left in “complete radio silence.”
“Given that they are yet to come forward on how to connect them, do we have any confidence in their ability?” he asked.
“They plainly refuse to appear before councillors and are evading accountability. We need to put more pressure on them to appear before us,” the Swords councillor said.
Balbriggan councillor Tom O’Leary said that “nobody is happy” with the situation.
The Fine Gael councillor said that there are two meetings between Uisce Eireann and Fingal County Council and said that the meetings he has attended, Uisce Éireann were “extremely evasive and didn’t even attempt to answer the questions.”
“I got a waffle answer. twice,” he remarked.
Labour councillor James Humphries noted, “while I like to highlight how ineffective and unresponsive they are,” he said that Uisce Éireann are being underresourced by the government.
“When you have ministers say they are giving Uisce Éireann an extra billion and then it comes out it isn’t additional money, there is dysfunction at every level from management at Uisce Éireann and a government level. Sometimes the blame may be attributed to a national government level.”
In a pre-Easter Dáil debate about water charges, Southside Fianna Fáil TD John Lahart noted that the attempted water privatisation attempts in the mid 2010s as well as cuts to local government services has “eroded trust.”
“In the past, local authorities like South Dublin County Council would respond quickly to sewer blockages affecting households; they would come out, unblock the pipe, bring the tanker out, and everybody was happy,” he noted.
“But when Irish Water took over, it ceased doing that in most cases, saying the fault was on the private or residential side.”
Speaking to Northside People in January 2024, local Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan, then serving as party spokesperson on local government, said that there was “frustration” on the doorsteps among citizens that local government services does not work for them.
“When I speak to people on doorsteps, there is a genuine sense of frustration that local government is so weak here,” he said.
“In the long run, abolishing town and urban councils and weakening the powers granted to councils cost Ireland more money,” he said at the time.
In the context of the current row between Fingal County Council and Uisce Éireann, a stronger local government would have more power to hold bodies or organisations like Uisce Éireann to account or indeed, provide services like water to citizens.
This week, Sinn Féin’s local government spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin questioned the government’s true intentions behind the announcement of €1 billion in extra funding for Uisce Éireann in last year’s Budget.
“It is clear that the €1 billion is not additional expenditure, but rather an alternative financing mechanism to cover existing commitments,” he said.
“The government has been caught out again, misleading the public on housing. Just as their claims that 40,000 new homes would be delivered in 2024 were exposed as untrue, so too has their claim of additional funding for water and wastewater infrastructure,” he said,