No application yet for funding for problematic water mains
KERRY County Council has yet to apply to Irish Water for funding to replace the water mains in Listowel behind the ‘ total chaos’ of recent water outages in the town.
‘ Total chaos’ was how Fine Gael County Councillor and general election candidate Mike Kennelly described the scenes in Listowel following the mains burst in recent months and told Council bosses he was ‘very disappointed’ to hear them say they had yet to apply for funding to fix the problem mains.
“I’m disappointed to hear that Kerry County Council ‘will’ apply to Irish Water, this has been going on a long time now...it caused total chaos...when you see buckets of water being brough into businesses in the 21st Century it is not acceptable,” Cllr Kennelly said at a meeting of the Listowel Municipal District council on Monday.
He had asked the Council if the chaos had been caused by one main in particular.
Senior Water Services Engineer Colm Mangan informed him that it was a single mains behind the problems. He said two breaks in the pipe had led to two outages, one in September last and the other in November; but that there had been another outage caused by ‘gas contractors’ working on the Bridge Road as well as a planned outage in the area at another point.
When Cllr Kennelly asked him why the Council had yet to apply to Irish Water for funding Mr Mangan said: “We have approximately 3,400-km of pipe in the county and that pipe has only had two bursts.”
However with funding in place to resurface the roads above the problem stretch Mr Mangan said the Council was hoping for a favourable response from Irish Water - as it will not have to cost the resurfacing of the road as part of the allocation.
“The road works are going to happen sooner rather than later so you will need an answer on this,” Cllr Kennelly said.
Mr Mangan said the replacement works would have to be carried out ‘in tandem’ with the roadworks. Kerry County Council is to raise the issue with Irish Water officials at the next monthly meeting of the Authority in Tralee. Mr Mangan assured Cllr Kennelly that the agency would have the application for funding by that juncture, agreeing the outages were what he termed a ‘small disaster’ for Listowel.