Hairdressers in Mayo 'using bottled water due to outages'

A councillor has expressed concern over water outages in the Bonniconlon area.

Cllr John O’Hara told last week’s meeting of Ballina Municipal District that the water supply has been coming on and off in Bonniconlon, especially in homes located on higher ground.

“In the last month, we’ve had water outages that can last up to two days in Bonniconlon. Then we might get two days of water before it goes off again."

Cllr O'Hara called on Uisce Éireann (Irish Water) to invest in a new reservoir for Bonniconlon to address the issue.

“There has been as much spent repairing pipes as could have been spent replacing them. Mayo County Council do a fantastic job making the repairs but the infrastructure isn’t there. 

“I’m calling on Irish Water to get this done. There is water out somewhere every day and it is impacting businesses. We have hairdressers having to use water in bottles,” he said.

“We’re living in a democracy and people should have water. They ring Irish Water and get stuck on hold for 15 or 20 minutes.” 

Cllr Jarlath Munnelly agreed and suggested that the council write to Uisce Éireann to ask that short-term measures are implemented to address the ongoing outages in Bonniconlon until the longer term solution of a reservoir is developed.

• Published as part of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.