Madam, – It seems that each season brings its own quota of water cuts; the weather is either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. When the weather freezes, the water supply is cut off; when the thaw sets in, it is again cut off. When we have drought, the water is cut off; and when we have floods, it is cut off again.
It might be due to Ireland having The Wrong Sort of Weather.
It might also be caused by Ireland having an old, run-down, badly-maintained and badly-funded water supply infrastructure.
Your older readers will remember how, into the 1950s, American visitors to Europe used to ask, “Is the water safe to drink?”. At the time, the answer was, “Of course”. Now, in some of our major cities, the answer has become “No”, or, more and more frequently, “There is no water to drink”.
This puts Ireland firmly into the “Third-World” category, a sad place for the erstwhile Celtic Tiger.
After a century of neglect and under-funding, the problem is not going to be easy, or quick, or cheap, to correct.
Given the national scale of the problem, it is wholly irresponsible to pass the responsibility to the local authorities. That is why I would ask the main political parties to set out clearly their policies for rebuilding the nation’s water supply infrastructure, from a central government point of view. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Instead of digging underground and creating a multimillion euro metro to Dublin airport, we should dig underground and replace Dublin’s archaic leaking water pipes.
No more talk of this grandiose underground rail line should occur until Dublin has a first-world underground water supply system that doesn’t break down every time there is a moderate frost. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I’m intrigued at the letter from Ellen MacCafferty (December 30th). Does she often have dinner guests who wish to use her shower? – Yours, etc,