The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley, has said that local authorities must plan adequately in order to respond to drinking water incidents.
He was speaking in Kilkenny to local authority managers on Friday last November 7 when he said, “I regard the preparation of Drinking Water Incident Management Plans by local authorities as essential. Such plans will enable each local authority to act decisively in the event of drinking water incident, thus minimising the impact and ensuring that good quality drinking water is restored to consumers urgently.”
The Minister was speaking at the Best Practice Seminar in the
Management of Drinking Water Seminar at the Lyrath Estate Hotel,
organised jointly by his Department and the Environmental
Protection Agency.
The seminar was held in order to demonstrate the best local authority practice in the management of drinking water quality. It was specifically targeted at county and city managers.
Minister Gormley informed the delegates that the Government had made unprecedented levels of investment in Ireland’s water services infrastructure over recent years. His Department’s capital allocation for investment in water services in 2009 will be €560 million - an increase of 19 per cent on 2008, a hugely significant increase in the light of the challenging economic background against which the budget was framed.
The Minister stated that this “demonstrates clearly the high priority which I and the Government afford to improving our water services infrastructure.”
Minister Gormley stated that access by the public to water quality data“will be a key driver in bringing about sustained improvements instandards and consumer confidence in our drinking water supplies.”
The Minister continued, “In line with commitments in the Programme for Government, local authorities should publish up-to-date information on drinking water quality on their websites,” Minister Gormley asked
each local authority to establish a contact telephone hotline for responding to queries regarding drinking water quality. The Ministeralso asked local authorities to be pro-active in seeking to counter the significant threats posed by septic tanks and animal wastes to the quality of Ireland’s water.
