Farmers unhappy over 'unfair' water tariff
Uisce Éireann came in for harsh criticism at a meeting of Westport-Belmullet MD.
The cathaoirleach of Westport Belmullet Municipal District, Cllr Sean Carey, has called for a workshop with council management to resolve "unfair" water meter charges being levied on farmers in Mayo.
The Fianna Fáil councillor told last week's meeting of the municipal council that farms in West Mayo were divided into various parcels in terms of water charges, so some farmers were paying more than others. New tariffs for water and wastewater were introduced on October 1st last, with the standing charge per connection doubling from €43 to €83
“Some farmers, through no fault of their own, whose land may be in different parcels, are paying €83 a meter for a standing charge for water [on each parcel], which is unfair. I have also been told of one farmer whose household meter would be charged at this rate from next year on, even though the water is only being used for the house and not the farm. There should not be an €83 tariff on that and I think a workshop to discuss this should take place.”
Cllr Carey said electricity outages also occur regularly in Erris.
“We have outages of electricity supply on numerous occasions throughout the year, even in the best of weather, and people are left without supply for days. In this day and age, it is not good enough and especially impacts older people and people with health conditions who depend on electricity for their appliances. I think we should have the ESB in here to explain what is going on with the service," Cllr Carey added.
Cllr John O’Malley described Uisce Éireann as "one of the biggest disasters in this state".
"You can see what they have done with Newport and the sewage flowing into the bay there and the years they have put the works off.
“Now they are going to start charging farmers for every meter they own. I can tell you that the farmers will take the fences away from the rivers and water their stock there instead.
"They were asked to fence these rivers off to keep them clean and stop the stock going into them, and it is compensated they should be for all the work they have done, rather than having water meters put on the land. So I am warning you, if they keep this up, this is what will happen and we won’t need the meters in the end.”
