Tap to be turned on for water protest

QUERY Deputy Lisa Chambers

Murrisk resident concerned about ‘dirty water’ as wife about to give birth to baby

Áine Ryan

A cross-community committee about the drinking water controversy in Murrisk is set to meet tonight (Tuesday) to discuss the imminent implementation of its campaign of protest. The committee, which represents people from Belclare to Louisburgh, has threatened the possibility of closing Croagh Patrick and local beaches to visitors unless Government responds to their call for the extension of the public water scheme, as promised over a decade ago.
While Minister Michael Ring has failed to respond to written communications (last week and yesterday, Monday, at the time of going to press) from The Mayo News, his constituency colleague, Deputy Lisa Chambers forwarded Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Eoghan Murphy’s written response to her queries about the issue.
Minister Murphy’s response states: “In the context of the Rural Water Programme my department made enquiries with Mayo County Council which indicate that the council recently engaged with the Murrisk and Lecanvey community with a view to them forming a Group Water Scheme for the area subject to co-funding under my department’s Rural Water Programme. Such a Group Water Scheme for the area would be sourced from a public water connection provided by Irish Water. I understand that the Rural Water Section of the council continue to be available to engage with the community on this option.”
However, the community committee has reiterated the fact that Mayo County Council repeatedly declined to provide a group water scheme in the past on the grounds of its unsuitability and, moreover, that a proposed cost by the county council to the communities of €750,000 for such a scheme now was totally prohibitive and unacceptable. A young child from the area was hospitalised during April with e-coli and cryptosporidium.

Sinn Féin raises issue in Seanad
MEANWHILE, Sinn Féin Senator Rose Conway-Walsh raised the issue for the second time in the Seanad last week and called on Minister Murphy to come to the upper house of the Oireachtas ‘to discuss the urgency for of the extension of the water supply from Westport to Louisburgh’.
“I raised details of correspondence from one resident who is concerned about the fact that his wife is expecting a baby in the next few weeks and there is no clean running water into the house. The household is dependent on a pipe crudely inserted into a stream.  If the pipe moves when the torrent is fast due to heavy rain, or if it hasn’t rained water does not get into the pipe. He tells of having spent hours on winter nights up the mountain sometimes knee deep in freezing cold water, trying to get their water back by removing air-blocks,” Senator Conway-Walsh said.
She cited the fact that ‘householders are spending huge amounts on bottled water and on treatment systems they have purchased themselves and also have to maintain at their own expense’.
She added: “Access to clean water is a basic service which is being denied to these residents.
This is not only affecting people living in the area, thousands of visitors climb Croagh Patrick every year. Tourism is a huge employer in the area. Without water this area cannot hope to fulfill its true potential.”