Irish Water must answer for Leixlip Water Plant failings

Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Housing, Planning and Local Government Darragh O’Brien has criticized Irish Water for their failure to implement warnings from a March 2019 EPA report which led to last week’s Boil water notice in the Dublin area.
Some 615,000 households were affected by the notice due to issues with the Leixlip Water Treatment Plant. The comments come after a detailed EPA review of last week’s incident.
Deputy O’Brien said: “The review clearly points to serious failings by Irish Water to heed warnings from the EPA as far back as March. The result has been massive disruption to hundreds of thousands of households and businesses. The report found that Irish Water and Fingal County Council had failed to implement the main recommendations of the EPA’s previous audit of Leixlip Water Treatment Plant in March 2019. 
“In particular there was a failure to install automatic shutdown when critical plant alarms are not responded to, as previously recommended, which was a contributory factor to the incident. I am pleased to see that the automatic shutdown system has now been put in place, as was recommended last March. It is just a pity that it took the events of last week to make this happen.”
“Next week officials from Irish Water are due before an Oireachtas committee. I will use this opportunity to grill them over why these recommendations were not acted upon in a timely manner. Furthermore, what steps have Irish Water taken to ensure the problems will not emerge again and that the EPA report will be fully implemented, particularly the recommendation to improve and enhance the Leixlip plant by including Ultraviolet technologies in the water treatment process. Minister Murphy needs to take responsibility and ensure Irish Water for fills its duties and have the resources to do so. ” concluded Deputy O’Brien.