Adjournment Debate. - Naas (Kildare) Water Supply Contamination. – Dáil Éireann (26th Dáil) – Wednesday, 16 Oct 1991

Adjournment Debate. - Naas (Kildare) Water Supply Contamination.

Mr. Dukes

My immediate concern arises from a proposal last year by the Dublin authorities to ration the supply of public water to County Kildare. I will not go into the reasons for that situation but it created the danger that it might be necessary to ration water supplies in the county town of Naas. As a result another source of supply which had been unused for 30 years, that is, Sunday's Well, was opened for public use to supply approximately 40 per cent of the town's needs.

At the beginning of last week an epidemic of gastric disorders hit Naas. About 17 people have been hospitlaised while on Friday of last week a number of schools in Naas were closed because so many of the students were ill. The source of those disorders has been traced back to contamination of the Sunday's Well source by coliform bacteria. While the source has now been closed off, it is anything but clear what the public and the responsible local authorities should do or what course of action should be recommended to them.

When the supply was closed off some householders were advised on Tuesday of last week that for a period of 48 hours they should boil all water before use. Some affected householders got no advice until Thursday and none of the householders concerned was told for how long they had to boil water before it could be used. The Minister will be aware as I am that most modern automatic electric kettles do not boil water for any substantial period of time. There was also some conflicting advice. For example, some householders were told that they should not use water for washing without previously boiling it while others got no such advice. At the same time as this conflicting advice was being given to householders, catering establishments in the town were being advised not to use tap water at all in the preparation of food or for the washing of hands by staff. I find it hard to believe that water which is not suitable for use in catering establishments under any circumstances can be made suitable for domestic use.

Even with the contaminated source of supply closed off the contamination remains in the system, in the pipes, in holding tanks, in header tanks in houses and so on. Super chlorination of the water is being carried out but it is clear it will take time for that to have effect and for the system to be flushed out. It seems that while contamination has been reduced in some parts of the system there are other parts of the system where there has been no improvement at all. It is appalling that it is only today, ten days after the problem first emerged, and only after the firm insistence of my colleagues on the Naas Urban District Council last night, that any consistent advice had been issued to householders and that a helpline service has been set up which is manned by Civil Defence volunteers.

The public need to know where the responsibility for co-ordinating the response to this problem lies. Is there an emergency plan? Are there operating guidelines and if there is a plan or set of guidelines who is in charge of overseeing it? The public and the medical practitioners need to know the exact type of contamination involved. We have been told that it is the E-coli bacterium. Is that sufficiently precise to enable medical practitioners and the health boards to take the necessary action? We need to be assured that the advice being given to the public, to domestic and commercial users of water, is based on an accurate identification of the nature of the contamination, that it takes account of the peculiarities of the supply system and that it is consistent.

Finally, the public need to be assured that the Sunday's Well supply will not be reopened for use again unless and until the present source of contamination has been dealt with effectively. It appears the problem may lie in the fact that a sewer some 15 to 20 metres away from the source of supply has been blocked up and has leaked contamination into the surrounding area. We need to know how it was decided to put a sewer near a water supply source of that kind and who made the decision. I ask the Minister to give us now a clear statement on the precise lines and distribution of responsibility for dealing with this matter which is a cause of grave and recurring concern for the people of Naas.

Minister for the Environment (Mr. Flynn)

I thank Deputy Dukes for raising this important matter. I am gravely concerned at the most serious pollution episode which occurred last week in Naas. The widespread illness and the disruption and anxiety in human terms which resulted underline the fundamental necessity of maintaining pure and uncontaminated water supplies. Thankfully incidents of drinking water contamination on the scale of last week's are exceedingly rare. I can assure the House that, as soon as all the facts have been accurately established, I will be impressing the lessons of last week's bad experience on all sanitary authorities. In this way, the possibility of recurrence will be minimised.

The provision of a pure and wholesome supply of water is a statutory responsibility of individual sanitary authorities. This responsibility is enshrined in the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878. In addition, sanitary authorities are empowered to cut off water supplies in cases where waste, contamination and misuse arise. In 1988 I made regulations governing the quality of water intended for human consumption which gave legal effect in Ireland to a corresponding EC Directive. These regulations set minimum quality standards for all water supplied through public or private water supply schemes either for human consumption and/or for use in food production. The regulations cover some 55 parameters of water quality relating to the physical and chemical characteristics of the water, its microbiological quality and the presence of toxic or other substances in water. These standards represent the final quality check on drinking water at the point it is made available to the consumer.

I am pleased to state that a preliminary report prepared at my Department's request by the Environmental Research Unit on the quality of drinking water throughout Ireland for 1989 is about to be published. This fulfils a promise I made to this House on full disclosure regarding the quality of drinking water. My Department have also recently prepared, and will be circulating through local authorities, a leaflet on measures to be taken to protect drinking water quality in private group schemes.

As far back as May 1986 my Department issued a comprehensive circular to all sanitary authorities entitled Guidelines for Emergency Planning to Protect Water Resources. The thrust of this circular was not only to remind authorities of their statutory responsibilities but also to ensure that a uniform approach was taken to see that appropriate procedures were put in place at local level to deal with any eventuality or emergency that might arise. The protection of water resources and drinking water supplies were, of course, a central purpose of these procedures.

When these resources or supplies were threatened the authorities were advised to take a number of immediate steps which include (a) shut-off water intakes where necessary; (b) early notification arrangements, by public address and media, to users and public at large and to appropriate agencies, of the hazard and what action is required of them; (c) consultation with chief medical officer for analysis of public health risk in the supply; (d) to arrange for samples at various locations throughout distribution system; (c) arrangements for alternative supplies to users; and (f) arrangements to keep users up-to-date with progress and required response.

When my Department became aware of the scale of the problem in Naas, a detailed report was sought from the council and a senior engineer from my Department visited the area to get a first-hand account of its extent and the measures taken by the local authority to remedy the problem. I have been assured by the local authority that immediate steps were taken to alleviate and remedy the situation. I can assure the Deputy that my Department will continue to monitor the situation until normal supplies are restored at the earliest possible date.

The statutory standards now in force for drinking water quality are, rightly, very stringent. I introduced these standards, and the first ever comprehensive report on them is about to be published. This report will not pull punches. It will show that drinking water quality in Ireland, as in the rest of EC member states, is still not in full compliance in all areas with all parameters of the regulations. This in no way compares to the health threatening circumstances instanced in Naas but nevertheless it is a situation to be remedied.

A strategy of major investment to solve these quality problems was one of the key priorities of the environment action programme which the Government published in January 1990. We pledged expenditure of up to £300 million between now and the year 2000 on improved water supplies and we have met this commitment to date.

I would like to assure the Deputy, and the people of Naas, that both long term and short term measures will be employed all around the country to safeguard the pure and healthy quality of drinking water supplies.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 16 Oct 1991