Tipperary County Council and Uisce Éireann have announced a precautionary Boil Water Notice following a labour dispute fallout.
The notice, which came into effect last night at midnight, will impact an estimated 19,240 customers until Friday night at midnight.
Local public water supplies affected include Templetney, Glenary, Clonmel, and Crotty Lake.
This comes due to planned industrial action arising from a dispute between the Unite Trade Union and 12 Local Authorities.
Jim Fitzgerald, Regional Operations Manager for the South East at Uisce Eireann, says the strike was triggered by issues at national level.
“Uisce Éireann is not part of it, and the issues that Unite have are national issues that neither Uisce Éireann nor Tipperary County Council can resolve in terms of a referendum on water, public sector status for Uisce Éireann, the age of redundancy scheme, and reopening the agreed framework document. Because of that, a number of the plants in Tipperary that are manned by Unite, namely Templetney, Glenary, Poulavanogue, and Crotty Lake, would normally have manual intervention during the day and there would be nobody on site. So, in order to protect public health and IN consultation with the HSE, Uisce Éireann and Tipperary County Council have imposed a boil water notice.”
The boil water notice caused by a 48-hour strike will come to an end tomorrow night at midnight.
However, as of now there are no reports of any disruption to water services nationwide, despite the strike by workers..
Mr. Fitzgerald says water supplies could still be hit over the next couple of days:
“At the moment, we are monitoring the situation, and we’ve got instant management teams set up in the 12 local authorities that are impacted by the strike. So far, there’s been no interruption in service, but it’s still early days in the 48-hour strike.”
Mr. Fitzgerald told Tipp FM that an investment is coming to plants across the Premier in the hopes of limiting future boil water notices.
“This is very disappointing that we’ve had to do that because we’ve had a lot of operational issues in Tipperary for the last two years. We want to apologise for those previous boil water notices and the current ones, and to thank the people of Tipperary for their perseverance with the boil water notices. There are major investments planned for all of these schemes. Most schemes now are in the process of being upgraded, and we’ll be spending in the order of over 100 million over the next number of years on upgrading all the assets in Tipperary.”
Both the Housing Minister and Uisce Eireann have urged water service workers to call off their 48 hour strike.
Around 100 employees from the trade union Unite have taken to the picket line.
Jim is urging workers to call off their action
“All of these matters are matters for the government and for the Minister. Neither Uisce Eireann nor the 12 local authorities can resolve that. We would urge Unite to call off the strike, which is causing unnecessary inconvenience to customers, and to go through the normal channels to resolve their issues.
Customers can check if their property is included by visiting the Water Quality section of www.water.ie and entering the property’s Eircode or by calling the Uisce Éireann’s customer care helpline, open 24/7, on 1800 278 278.
