Independent councillor Michael Kilcoyne has this week lashed out at the fact that from Tuesday week, April 29, if you have to make a call about water service issues such as a leak you will now have to call Irish Water on an 1890 number in Cork rather than calling the Mayo County Council to deal with it.
Speaking to the Advertiser this week, Kilcoyne said: “We were told all along that nothing would change, but that’s a major change. If you have a leak or there’s a sewerage backing into your house, you have to call an 1890 number to people all the way down in Cork, and they will make an assessment as to if it’s urgent, and they will then decide when it will be fixed or repaired. This is what the Taoiseach said people will be paying at least €245 a year for. It’s not good enough. They have already spent €82 million on consultants and this is what they came up with.”
Director of services for Mayo County Council, Paddy Mahon, confirmed that would be the case in most cases. He siad: “From April 29 if someone rings in to us in most cases we will divert them to Irish Water, who will then take the details of the query and send it back to us with a work order to carry out the work if needed. They have set up a system called Maximo for this process, and we have been using it for the past while in tandem with taking calls ourselves, but from April 29 we will be referring people on to Cork. Of course if there’s a major incident and there’s a pipe flooding the Main Street in a town and causing damage, we will go out and work on it immediately. We will also in cases of vulnerable people take the details if they call and make the call to Irish Water ourselves.”
Kilcoyne believes that the system will lead to the process of necessary repairs being delayed from what is currently repaired
