WE NEED RAIN... OR THE TAPS RUN DRY!

Restrictions ‘could start in September’

HOUSEHOLDS across the country face daytime water restrictions if the dry weather continues, Local Government Minister Eoghan Murphy has warned.

‘We need at least three weeks of heavy rainfall,’ he said, adding, ‘Things will get worse.’ And Irish Water, which will today announce major plans to curb how much we can use to cook and clean, said some areas face complete outages overnight while others would be reduced to a trickle.

Revealing that reservoirs have dropped to critically low levels, Kate Gannon, the head of corporate affairs, said there has been no significant rainfall for 40 days and there won’t be for ten more at

least. Mr Murphy told the Dáil yesterday he is in discussions on ‘emergency’ restrictions, adding: ‘We can only see a short time ahead but if we do not have rainfall in August we run the risk of restrictions in the daytime, probably in September and October.’

He added: ‘As things get worse – and they will get worse – I would caution TDs on all sides to refrain from blaming Irish Water.’

It inherited the problems of an antiquated system, he told the deputies, adding that the Dublin area alone loses 207million litres of water a day through leaks.

Mr Murphy, the Housing, Planning and Local Government Minister, said Ireland is now ‘into an event that is unprecedented’ because demand has increased so much since we last had a drought, 40 years ago.

‘The crisis is not over. In fact, it is far from being over. Although rain is expected to fall in some parts of the country over the weekend there will be nowhere near enough rainfall to replenish our ground water, our rivers, our reservoirs and our lakes.

‘We need at least three weeks of heavy rainfall to reverse the downward trajectory in our out stocks.’

He said there may be more emergency restrictions over the next week, based on advice he got from the National Emergency Coordination Centre yesterday, but wouldn’t say what they were.

Meanwhile, Irish Water has said that homes and businesses in Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Meath face even more restrictions but the details will not be released until today.

However, pressure in households and businesses in the affected areas will be reduced between the hours of 1am and 5am. While Irish Water says it can produce 610million litres every day for those counties, the demand there is now as high as 615million on some days. That’s an extra 50million compared to last summer when the average was 565million litres a day. The utility says demand this summer had risen to ‘concerning levels’.

During a heated debate in the Dáil, Mr Murphy hit out at People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy for suggesting that privitisation of Irish water supplies was behind the crisis.

‘Deputy Paul Murphy likes to believe in conspiracy theories around privatisation. The Government does not control the weather. We cannot foresee what is going to happen in August but we can foresee what will happen in the next ten to 15 days and in this regard we foresee no alleviation in terms of significant rainfall,’ he said.

He said a decision on additional night-time supply restrictions in Dublin was ‘imminent’, and would be taken in the next few days.

The minister added that 40 to 50 million litres had been saved daily in the Dublin area since the introduction

Two weeks’ rain ‘will just be soaked up’

of the hosepipe ban, but it was ‘not enough.’ Meanwhile, Ms Gannon said that the soil is now so dry that it will severely restrict water supplies even if it does rain.

‘Even if it rains solidly for the next two weeks the ground will soak up all that water before it gets to our rivers lakes and sources’, she said.

And an Irish Water spokeswoman said: ‘Every effort is being made to minimise the impact on homes and businesses and this will be assessed on a daily basis.

‘There may be some loss of supply at the edges of the network or on higher ground but every effort is being made to prevent that.’

Because of the 207million litres being lost in the Dublin area through leaks Irish Water is hoping that by reducing the pressure the impact will mean ‘that there is less usage and less leakage’.

The spokeswoman said: ‘Because less water is going through tanks in homes and businesses those tanks won’t fill as quickly and they won’t be as full as a result of the pressure as well.’ However, she said that previous efforts to save water by reducing water pressure had not been unsuccessful.

‘That was the first step to try to avoid having to do restrictions so in some areas the pressure has been down very slightly in a way that hasn’t impacted really but that hasn’t been sufficient which is why we will have to move to stricter restrictions’, she explained.

‘People may have reduced pressure during the day or initially, when the pressure is put back up in the morning, it still might be a little bit reduced’, she said.

Irish Water said it will be monitoring supplies daily before deciding if further measures are necessary.

The new measures are just the latest in a line of efforts made to reduce the use of water during the drought.

A nationwide hosepipe ban was introduced on July 6 with those breaching the ban facing a fine of up to €125. A ban had been in place in the greater Dublin area since July 2. There are restrictions on 20 schemes across the country affecting areas in counties Carlow, Clare, Cork, Galway, Kerry, Kilkenny, Laois, Limerick, Longford, Offaly, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath and Wexford.