Louth TD calls on Uisce Éireann to deal with local capacity and legacy issues

The fallout of the flooding that impacted North Louth and parts of Dundalk earlier this month continues with Louth TD Ruairí Ó Murchú saying this week that "capacity and legacy issues" need to be urgently dealt with by Uisce Éireann’s Drainage Area Plan.

The Sinn Féin deputy said he has asked for a meeting with Uisce Eireann to discuss aspects of their Drainage Area Plan for Dundalk and north county Louth, but highlighted a "legacy problem" that impacted on water users in the greater Shelagh area last week in the wake of Storm Debi.

He said he has requested a meeting with Uisce Éireann about their drainage plan and has spoken to Louth County Council about the work that is being done by the local authority to fix the problems in their remit following the devastating flooding in Cooley.

Deputy Ó Murchú said: "We need to make sure that we have the capacity, not only to avoid flooding when we can, but also to ensure that we take into account the addition of new housing estates and businesses. We need to put mitigations in place to avoid devastating flooding to homes and businesses."

He continued: "But we are also dealing with legacy issues in relation to water supply and last week, we saw a problem re-emerge where water was out in the greater Shelagh area and I believe this was an issue which arose due to a power outage caused by Storm Debi which knocked out operations at Cavan Hill.

"This meant they had to redirect the reservoir water at Dunbin for a period. Power also was lost at the pump station feeding Dunbin. A generator was put in place which went off overnight and this led to the reservoir being run down and this knocked water off for many people.

"When we thought it was going to be up and running the following morning, when the reservoir got more water, the outage led to an air lock at Courtbane pumping station which took almost 24 hours to fix.

"There seems to have been a monitoring issue which Uisce Eireann has accepted. This has happened before, during the summer. 

"It is something I will be chasing up, but again, I think we need an overall assessment and fixes to these legacy issues as well as making sure that there is sufficient capacity for both drinking and waste water."