Waterford City & County Council’s Environment Department has been accused of failing to engage with Irish Water and adequately supervise their contractors to ensure they are leaving Waterford estates exactly as they found them.
Sinn Féin’s Cllr Jim Griffin, at a Metropolitan District meeting, referred to recent disturbances in Tramore during the installation of water meters.
“These are estates where people worked hard to get paths, curbing and hedging and Irish Water contractors just railroaded in. It is not good enough. The Environment Section is failing sharply on this issue.”
Cllr Eddie Mulligan concurred that certain roadways had not been left back ‘in a satisfactory state’. He referred particularly to Railway Square, where the pathways with a sandstone finish had been dug up and then patched up with tarmacadam.
Cllr Mulligan also complained about the Irish Water contractors left John Roberts Square and parts of the Dunmore Road where, he said, white cement footpaths and red bicycle lanes had been filled in with black tarmac, with no effort to ‘tie in and match’. “We need to ensure the contractors leave everything as they found it,” Cllr Mulligan said.
Cllr John Hearne referred to the ‘anger and frustration’ of residents who are having water meters forced upon them.
The Council was told that a meeting had taken place with Irish Water ‘early on’, at which it was agreed that a ‘like for like’ repair would be guaranteed at all sites.
The current state of the roads was most likely just a temporary job but the Council will be insisting that the roads are repaired to their satisfaction in the end.
