Anger at Uisce Éireann bonuses as Cork residents protest 'in desperation' over water quality
Jean And Chuanacháin, Cork Niamh Picture: Keane Mount Harrington At Kent, Ní Brid Farran, David
People in Cork who say they have had dirty brown water flowing from their taps have blasted Uisce Éireann’s bonus payments as the utility struggles to fix discoloured water that has blighted parts of the city for two years.
The residents of Mount Farran took to the streets on Thursday night to highlight the public health issue hours after it emerged that some Uisce Éireann staff got bonuses of up to €30,000 last year.
“We are appalled to learn that Uisce Éireann employees are being rewarded with even more generous bonus payments when the evidence shows that their management of water supplies to Cork City homes is going from bad to worse,” they said in a statement.
“Uisce Éireann have shown nothing but gross incompetency.
We are a community on the streets out of desperation. Our complaints to Uisce Éireann are getting us nowhere. We are frustrated and worried about our health and our families' health after two long years of poor water quality supply running through our taps.
“We are expected to drink, cook, bathe, and wash our laundry in this unsafe, dirty water," they said.
“Uisce Éireann is incapable of telling us when we will have a reliable supply of safe water despite numerous complaints and they have not even offered us a temporary supply of clean water tanks.”
Solidarity TD Mick Barry said "it really sticks in the craw" to hear of Uisce Éireann bonuses of up to €30,000 when households in Cork City are being forced by the company to cope with a steady supply of discoloured water.
“More than a dozen of the top bosses are being paid €200,000 or more: Golden salaries for them, brown water for the people. It’s rotten,” he said.
Thursday's protest was the latest over the discoloured water issue which has been affecting parts of the city since the commissioning of the new €40m water treatment plant on the Lee Rd in July 2022.
As it came on stream, the utility changed the chemical process it uses to rebalance the pH of the water, switching from calcium hydroxide-lime to sodium hydroxide, or caustic soda.
This, combined with a faster rate of water flow through the pipes, has been dislodging sediment built up inside some of the network’s old cast iron pipes, discolouring the water.
As complaints surged in late 2022 and across 2023, the utility tweaked the chemistry but the problems and complaints continued.
As political pressure mounted, it set up a special taskforce earlier this year to try to tackle the problem once and for all.
It has spent months flushing the network in the worst-affected areas, and on Wednesday it began the latest round of flushing which will target Dublin Hill, Meelick Park, Mervue Crescent, Glenthorn, Old Whitechurch Rd, and areas off Ballyvolane Rd over the next two months.
On Tuesday it said it is investing €1.6m in the new treatment plant to further treat the source water coming into the plant, and the treated water before it leaves. A manganese removal system will be in place by the end of this year, with all the work completed by mid-2025.
While it has invested more than €100m in recent years in improving the city’s water infrastructure, it says around €500m is required, across several decades, to replace the city's entire cast iron mains network, some of which dates from the late 1800s.