Mount Farran residents still waiting for meeting with Uisce Éireann

Residents of Mount Farran have not yet been invited to meet with Uisce Éireann, despite the company promising to organise a meeting a week ago.

Elaine Eager, who lives in the residential area in Blackpool, explained that the community has had intermittent issues with water quality for the last two years, with the problem worsening in the last few months, with brown water coming out of their taps, leaving residents having to buy bottled water to drink.

An Uisce Éireann spokesperson said they “understand the frustration of affected customers and communities in Cork experiencing instances of discolouration.

“Uisce Éireann is undertaking all possible measures to minimise discolouration and to address the underlying issues across the network, including establishing a dedicated taskforce to manage our response.

“We are happy to facilitate an engagement with representatives of residents in Mount Farran and will liaise with them directly,” they said. “We have been actively responding to increased reports of discolouration in Mount Farran in recent days; including undertaking investigations on site, reactive flushing and testing across the area.

“Our initial investigations identified a passing valve which may have disrupted the water flow in the area, aggravating sediment in the pipes. Our operations team completed work to address this valve in recent days.

“We also identified the possible need for an additional hydrant and valve to allow for more targeted flushing in areas with more persistent reports; both of which were installed in the area on October 30. Following the installation of the hydrant, flushing has been carried out, and we will continue to monitor the supply in the area.”

Ms Eager told The Echo there has been an increase in works in Mount Farran this week “which hopefully will help resolve our issue.”

She added that the information contained in Uisce Éireann’s response to The Echo “is the most specific and informative” she has seen so far.

“We do still hope to meet with them and engage directly, we’re still trying to arrange a meeting,” she added.

Cork North Central People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Mick Barry said that the “least [Uisce Éireann] can do is hold a face-to-face meeting with them and spell out how they intend to resolve the ‘brown water’ crisis for this community”.

“Talk of ‘facilitating an engagement’ and ‘liaising with them directly’ fall short of actually organising the meeting requested by these residents,” he said. “The residents need a meeting and solutions.”