Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has been urged to take urgent action to resolve the “crisis” in water supply in Clonmel. 

Since April, there have been some 50 water outages in the County Tipperary town and local TD Mattie McGrath wants the State to give the issue its “immediate attention”. 

Speaking to Newstalk, Deputy McGrath said businesses in the area are suffering due to the disruption. 

“If they have no water they have to close down most of them and that’s not good enough in these hard times,” he said. 

“They are paying rates and everything else, so Minister O’Brien needs to look at the situation and ensure that interim funding is found for interim solutions.” 

Deputy McGrath said he was disappointed Tipperary County Council had refused Uisce Éireann permission to test a borehole at the Kickham Barracks site - which offered them a potential solution to the outages. 

'A pipedream'

He is also concerned that alternative solutions will take too long to put in place. 

“At this moment, it’s only a pipedream to get water from the River Suir and treat it - that’s 15 years away,” he said. 

As part of Budget 2024, Uisce Éireann was allocated €1.6 billion to “ensure the continued operation, repair and upgrading of the country’s water and wastewater infrastructure”. 

Uisce Éireann said they are continuing with "significant improvements" to the water supply in the Clonmel area. 

Main image: Kitchen taps left running.