Council accused of putting lives at risk by failing to act on water safety audit

The long-awaited safety audit of Galway City’s waterways has been completed by Irish Water Safety, but its findings have not yet been made public by the local authority.

The Council has come under criticism for failing to act immediately on the report – one councillor said it is putting lives at risk.

The Galway-based IWS agency was tasked with examining possible weak spots in the city’s water network and delivered a draft document to City Hall “a few weeks ago”.

According to Chief Executive of Irish Water Safety, Lieutenant Commander John Leech, he was unaware that the Council were yet to make their findings public.

He did confirm to the Galway City Tribune that there is a considerable body of work to be carried out on foot of their findings.

“This was no normal risk assessment – it is our first time to do this kind of report for a whole city and it was a mammoth task.

“In the long-term, if Galway City Council wants this to work, they need to communicate it with the various bodies involved.

“There is an enormous amount of work to be done to reduce the numbers of drownings here in Galway City,” said Lt Cdr Leech.

Awareness of water safety has been heightened in recent times with a number of high-profile losses of life due to incidents involving the city’s waterways.

A number of coroner’s reports in recent month have called for steps to be taken to prevent further loss of life.

Coroner for Galway West, Dr Ciaran MacLouglin has previosly backed the recommendation of Gardaí to install safety barriers to prevent a repeat of the tragic death of NUI Galway student Michael Bugler, who accidentally walked of a pier at the Claddagh in late 2015.

There have also been calls to improve lighting in possibly dangerous areas leading into the city’s rivers and canal.

According to City Councillor Niall McNelis, the report needs to be released as soon as possible so that work can commence and recommendations acted on as soon as possible.

“I am very annoyed and disappointed that this has taken so long – this is a serious matter of urgency as we have seen in coroner’s report after coroner’s report.

“It is very frustrating waiting around for reports because people are at risk and something needs to be done and I would say that the Council need to release this report as soon as possible so we can start working on this.

“I’m not just talking about barriers and equipment here but there are simple things that could be done straight away – lighting and cameras are a key part of this and how can the Council look for funding from Dublin if we don’t have the report,” said McNelis.

A spokesperson for the City Council confirmed that the report has been received by the local authority.

“We have received a draft report from Irish Water Safety and it is under consideration – the particular member of staff that deals with this is away at the moment.

“There is a considerable amount of work to be done, but as soon as the report has been considered, it will be distributed to councillors,” said the spokesperson.