Council leaves house holders in the dark

Date Published: 16-Oct-2007

Galway City Council came in for scathing criticism last night for failing to communicate with the public after the city’s third ‘water crisis’ in a matter of months left hundreds of householders on the west of the city without a supply for up to three days.

Homes in the Knocknacarra, Rahoon, and Barna areas experienced water outages and low tap pressure last Thursday, Friday and Saturday as a result of a burst water main in Newcastle on Thursday afternoon.

Officials were criticised at last night’s meeting of the Council for their failure to inform the public of what was happening. Cllr. Donal Lyons (PD) said that people should be able to telephone City Hall ‘out of hours’ to find out what was going on.

“I was getting calls up until 11.30pm on Friday and I don’t think it is good enough,” he said. “We fell down in relation to our communications again. People phoned into City Hall at 2pm to be told that the water was back on, whereas it wasn’t back for 24 hours.”

Cllr. Catherine Connolly (Ind.) pointed out that it was the third ‘water crisis’ this year and said it was no way to treat people. “All of…..