Uisce Éireann needs 'to get its act together', says Cork County Council chief executive

UISCE Éireann needs “to get its act together”, Cork County Council interim chief executive Valerie O’Sullivan told elected members attending yesterday’s meeting of the authority as she briefed them on the number of towns and villages around the county that needed their wastewater treatment plant upgraded to enable the granting of planning permission.

Ms O’Sullivan told councillors that a high-level meeting recently took place between council officials and representatives of Uisce Éireann and all the different cases relating to delayed wastewater treatment plants around the county had been discussed in what she described as a “positive meeting after a full and frank exchange of views”.

She was responding to a motion brought by Independent councillor Declan Hurley, who said that during meetings with Uisce Éireann since Christmas, he had been told that it would be five to ten years before there would be an upgrade of the plant in Dunmanway.

His motion had proposed ending an effective ban on granting planning permissions for development in Dunmanway. Ms O’Sullivan said there was no ban in place but acknowledged that the wastewater treatment situation was making it more difficult to get planning permission.

“There is no physical ban on planning permissions from Cork County Council but anyone that applies now in Dunmanway town for a change of use or for a new connection to the existing waste water treatment plant is going to be refused/has been refused,” said Mr Hurley.

The issue in Dunmanway concerns the existing treatment plant’s discharge pipe is going out into a Special Area of Conservation which is a habitat of the freshwater pearl mussel. Because of this, the advice given to the planning officials by ecologists is that the treatment plant isn’t capable of processing extra material and this is leading to the refusal of applications.

Ms O’Sullivan said the situation had been raised with Uisce Éireann during the recent meeting as had separate situations in Crossbarry, Carrignavar, Castletownbere, and other towns and villages across Cork.

“They have undertaken to put what they call workarounds in place particularly in Dunmanway pending the waste water treatment plant upgrade which is actually likely to be 10 years away and our response to that is no way, no way is there a ten year hiatus here or a ten year length of difficulty for Cork County Council in assessing planning permission applications in that area and stunting development and growth,” said Ms O’Sullivan.

She said that had the local authority received the funding allocated to Uisce Éireann it would have completed the work needed to be done.

“They got a lot of state funding and they still haven’t their act together in terms of work on the ground programmed in accordance with what the country says Cork should do in terms of growth targets, if we had gotten that, we’d have done it.”

An Uisce Éireann spokesperson said up to €400m was being invested in Cork city and county during 2020-24.

“Similar levels are expected to be invested in the next investment cycle (2025-2029) with Dunmanway among the projects under consideration for inclusion,” the spokesperson said.