Patience wearing thin on persistent Gorey water issues – ‘It’s not good enough’

VOICING the frustrations of people across Gorey at persistent planned and unplanned water outages, Cllr Andrew Bolger was more or less told to hang on in there; that significant improvements are coming.

The Fianna Fáil councillor raised the issue at the January meeting of the county council and stated that the “water section is completely overworked with the amount of issues they are facing”.

"I live in the town myself,” he said. “The feedback I’m getting out there is that these outages are ongoing, both planned and unplanned, and some people are paying hundreds to get their system back working right. All of the feedback is that this is just not good enough and I’m seeking assurances that this won’t continue.”

Recently, Gorey residents expressed their frustrations over outages, some noting that they were without water for over seven days in a period of less than a month.

Director of Services Eamonn Hore noted that Irish Water are working on significant upgrades in the Gorey area, including long-awaited upgrades to the Creagh plant and leak reduction repair works. 

Back in August 2021, the Creagh Water Plant in Gorey made national headlines after a power failure there resulted in contaminated water entering the system and 46 people becoming ill. Mr Hore believes that this incident sparked Irish Water to act.

"I think that unfortunate incident at Creagh in 2021 prompted Irish Water to act more quickly on some of these issues in Gorey,” he said. “Works are ongoing at the moment and I’d be hopeful that we should see a marked improvement over the next six months.”