The residents of Ballyhooly were without water for over 48 hours last weekend, writes Brian Moore. The break occurred on Friday evening and, when council engineers attempted to fix the fault, more problems arose.
“Most of the village had no water for two days and nobody told us what was going on. I am lucky, we have a well but the main problem was the lack of communication from the council,” Ballyhooly resident, Adrian Godwin told The Avondhu.
Cllr Noel McCarthy called on the council to put a better communication policy in place.
“The main problem was that people didn’t know what was going on. The council needs to better communicate when problems like this occur. There should have been a water tanker in place after the first 24 hours of the break. This is a policy that should be adopted as standard procedure,” Cllr McCarthy said.
“The communications were not what they should have been and we apologise for that. We should have made contact with the local radio station to let the residents know. We expected the repairs to be completed within a few hours but then more problems arose. Again we would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused,” senior engineer, Aidan Weir told a meeting of the Northern Committee this week.
“If the Council has acknowledged the error then the important thing is that this shouldn’t happen again. This could have been sorted on Saturday. The bigger issue is water shortages and mains breaks. That is something that will have to be tackled by a new government,” Deputy Sean Sherlock TD told The Avondhu.
Deputy Ned O’Keeffe TD is also very critical of the way the council dealt with the problems in Ballyhooly
. “It is critical that the council ensures that there is an emergency number in place for people to contact when there is a problem. There is no excuse for this lack of communication,” Deputy O’Keeffe said.
