Water services restored in Fermoy after major break

THE massive water break which resulted in the closure of Fermoy’s Kent Bridge last night has been repaired and water has been restored in the town.

Work got underway on repairing the break at 9am this morning, with traffic management in place in the busy area.

The bridge was closed for a time last night as emergency services attended the scene where the water main burst sent a geyser of water into the air at around 5.30pm yesterday evening. The area was flooded as a result and local businesses were hit with water supply interruptions.

Some schools and preschools in the town were also closed today because of the disruption.

Crews worked at the site last night to make the area safe and returned this morning to carry out repair works.

A spokesman for Irish Water confirmed at noon today that the work was complete and water supplies had returned to normal.

Irish Waters Pat Britton said: “I would like to thank the Fire Service, Gardaí, Cork County Council Roads Department and particularly to our partners in the Cork County Council Water Services team who were out late last night and back at first light this morning to undertake the repair works."

He added: “I would like to apologise to any customer who was affected by last night’s water outage and to the community in Fermoy for any traffic delays they experienced whilst engineers carried out the emergency repair works. We understand the inconvenience unplanned outages can have on customers and we appreciate your patience as we worked to return the water supply as quickly and as safely as possible.”

Fine Gael councillor Noel McCarthy said that there needs to a plan in place for future incidents which require closure of the bridge, disrupting traffic in the town. He said there were long queues on the M8 motorway this morning because people who typically went through the town via the bridge had to use the toll road.

He said: “I will be raising this issue at the next meeting of the Fermoy Municipal district on November 15.” 

He believes that motorists affected by such closures of the main artery through the town should not have to pay a toll charge for using the motorway to get from one side of the town to the other.