Joint Committee on Public Petitions and the Ombudsmen debate -
Thursday, 4 Jul 2024

I welcome everyone to the meeting. Apologies have been received from Deputy Browne and Senator Warfield.

The first item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes of the previous meeting. They have already been approved in a virtual private meeting but for procedural reasons, they must be approved in public session. Are the minutes agreed? Agreed.

I will now read the formal note on privilege. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the place in which Parliament has chosen to sit, namely Leinster House, in order to participate in public meetings.

I will not permit a member to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts of Leinster House will be asked to leave the meeting.

The order of business is engagement with Mr. Thomas Carney, petitioner and campaigner for the Kiltimagh and Cleragh-Lisduff group water scheme.

Before we start, I wish to explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references made to other persons in witnesses' evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence within the parliamentary precincts, is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if witnesses' statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue them. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I propose that we publish the opening statements of witnesses on the committee's website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

On behalf of the committee, I extend a warm welcome to our witness, Mr. Thomas Carney. He will read out his opening statement, which should last for no longer than ten minutes. We will then have questions and comments from members. Each member will have ten minutes. Members may speak more than once. I invite Mr. Carney to make his opening statement.

I thank the committee for the second hearing. I really appreciate it. I thank Ms Barbara Hughes and her whole staff for being so gracious and kind. What a pleasure it was working with them to get here.

I am here to speak on behalf of the resilient community of Cleragh, situated in Kiltimagh, County Mayo. Over the span of 12 years, our villagers, with their over 30 homes, have persevered through arduous trials in the pursuit of securing a reliable water scheme. Despite unwavering dedication and much collaborative engagement with Mayo County Council's water department, our journey has been fraught with complexities and setbacks. The council has cut all communication with our committee. We got an email from the housing Minister regarding an application that was submitted by Mayo Council for grant funding. This is the second grant application. The first grant, of just a little over €90,000, was secured. We do not know how much was asked for in the second application. I checked yesterday with the Taoiseach's office. It got a copy too, but it is also unsure. The application is incomplete. We do not know whether it is based on the two-year cycle or the four-year cycle, so we have no idea when the grant funding will be approved.

We were forced to make applications under the Freedom of Information Act on several occasions to find out what was happening with our own water scheme. This committee recommended on the last occasion that we be refunded in this regard. The council has said it will not refund anything related to freedom of information applications to find out about our own water scheme.

Today, we are still 28 families without a water supply. Buckets and barrels are required, and older people have to be helped out by taking the water to them because they have no means of getting it or the help to do it. One is in a wheelchair.

While the County Mayo water department has provided sporadic guidance and engaged sporadically, regrettably our progress has been hindered by inconsistencies, communication lapses, and bureaucratic obstacles. Our residents, grappling with contaminated wells and bureaucratic red tape, have endured daily hardship, exacerbated by wells going dry during the summer months. This was compounded by the ongoing challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. We had to work during that.

Dealing with the lack of transparency makes it difficult for us every day to figure out what is going on. As I said, freedom of information requests were the only way we got any information on how to figure out what was happening with our own water scheme. Not alone that, the amount of money we had to pay to figure out about our own water scheme was ridiculous and has meant hardship for us. Moreover, despite our community's commitment to financial contributions, amounting to almost €40,000, and successful grant procurement, transparency surrounding the allocation of funding for our water scheme project remains elusive. The lack of clarity makes it harder and not only undermines our collective efforts but also erodes trust in the process. Therefore, we do not know what is going on.

We are back here today because, since we were in touch with the committee, communication has become more broken down. We were told our village lacks manners and that the dates would be postponed even further. We were told that if we want a water supply, we had better keep quiet. That is from the top down, and that is why we are here today.

For the seniors and those like myself with kids, it is very hard to bucket and barrel water every day. I am willing to take any questions members have. Twelve years is too long. It is not like we are asking for something for free. The council put in writing that it would be €1,350 for each family to bring a connection to the gate. We were to hire our own plumber and take it from there. We had no problem with that. Twenty-eight homes all want the water and all will pay. Some can pay more than others. It is very hard on those on a fixed income or pension. We have some disabled people in the village and people like myself who have young kids.

Mr. Carney is very welcome. I do not believe I was here on the previous occasion for much of the discussion. I had to go out. Meetings clash from time to time.

How many are on the committee for the 28 homes affected?

Yes, we have. We have contacted four of them from three different parties. I will not mention parties. They have done their best to end this. We set up the committee on the basis of the guidelines given to us by the council. The council said it could not help us if we did not have a committee to help it to do the work. We put the committee together. We went out with our contractors to do the surveys. Council staff did not do that; we did it. We brought back the hard copies on easements, did the signing up and filled out all the applications. There was a good deal of confidential information, including on who lived in the houses, the age groups and whether the occupants had small farms. All that was provided by us and we dropped it on the desks of those concerned.

I will because I have nothing to hide. Transparency is what will get to the bottom of this. I contacted the council again, starting at the top with the director. He unleashed on me. He was upset. He asked me whether we wanted a water supply, and I said that was what we wanted. He said we have no manners in the village. I listened to him and said it was fine because he was expressing his opinion. However, I asked him what the code or the guidelines are for having manners when you want a water supply. We are not bothering the council because we are paying for this. If we got the grant funding, the scheme would be done. The council is talking about high costs, but failure on its part is not failure on ours. We did everything possible. We would have put the pipes in the ground on the basis of the council's guidelines. We had no problem hiring one of its contractors to do that. It is all straight going because you are going through little fields, and there are no utilities involved. There are ESB lines only. There is no phone service now; mobile phones are used.

To convey how messed up it is, we walked with the contractors, whose guidelines did not want the pipes on the road. There was no problem with that. Every farmer, and everyone else, signed, whether they were getting it or not. The council took the survey and threw it in the bin. It said it wanted it on the road now. Now, another survey must be done. The last I heard was that engineers from Dublin are being brought down. Does Mayo County Council not have engineers sitting in its office who can do this? It is a simple water supply issue. It is about a connection to the gate and figuring out the size of the pipe. I am sure a three-inch pipe would carry all the water. We are only talking about one mile, not 20 miles. The water tower can be seen from my back door.

They are trying. A young lady spoke at our most recent meeting. She explained it in detail. When there is a roadblock or logjam or whatever you want to call it at the top and it is not getting through that, it is kind of like a principal in a school having anger issues with one child. You can talk to the kid all you want but it is the principal who needs to be spoken to.

The oldest person is 95 and in a wheelchair. My four-year-old child is the youngest. There are all ages between them. This is a rural area with an older population. Approximately 50% of the people are over the age of 50. There are then the ones who have not left. There are school kids and college kids who have left home. That is what we have. It is an older population. In five years, that population will not be able to collect buckets of water anymore. What rubbed the committee the wrong way was the council suggesting we, all 28 homes, should move out of the village. That would be okay if the council provided us with 28 homes but it has said there are no homes for us. I am not making this up; this is true. This is what the council told us.

One or two of the houses may have a water supply, but the water has iron oxide in it because that area is on boggy ground. Therefore, if you put in white clothes, they will come out yellow. Washing machines or anything like that get clogged up. Mr. Alan Ivers talked about his rental property at the previous meeting. His next thing is to ask the tenants to leave.

Irish Water will take over the scheme once the council puts it in. We had a tough time. Irish Water and Mayo County Council do not talk to each other. They do not get along. That is what I was told. By their actions, they do not get along. It is beyond me why they do not talk to each other. I went to Irish Water's office in Castlebar after I talked to Irish Water in Cork. They told me the office was in this estate in Castlebar. When I went in and knocked on the door, a security guard came out and told me there were no offices there, only computers. There were no people physically present there. Why are people being told to go there to talk to Irish Water?

It caught my attention, from listening to the last meeting on this matter, that the three representatives from Mayo County Council said our water scheme is 90% better than most of them in Mayo. God help the rest of them. Ours has been ongoing for 12 years and it is no further ahead than it was at day one, except the council has spent €70,000 on surveys and received €90,000 in grant funding. Where is the other €20,000 it says it does not have?

I do not what to say to Mr. Carney. It just seems to be an extraordinary situation. I would love to be able to say I can solve this in the morning. From our perspective, we can get back onto the authorities again. We might contact all of the Oireachtas people in Mayo about this case, if that is in order. It is very distressing for the community, as Mr. Carney has explained. It just does not sit right with me.

This is 2024. Third world countries have water supply. From reading Irish Water's website, it is helping countries in Africa to get water supply in order that they do not have to collect buckets of water. We are all working families. We are willing to pay and help. We did the work. All we want is a water supply. It is not our fault if the system is broken or if Mayo County Council does not know what it is doing.

When we started out first, it was said there was a problem with flow and capacity. However, that river never had a flow capacity. Since our application, 20 houses were built in the town of Kiltimagh, which is three miles away. Water has to be pumped up the hill to it. They got 20 connections before us. We were told there was no flow capacity and that is why our project would not be moved forward. The council wanted money from the Minister to upgrade the plant. It was giving out all kinds of connections, but not to our village.

No, it was manufactured. I say that because, through the FOIs, I could not get an answer. We, the committee, could not get an answer from the council. The council was either in a meeting or not in. We were told to leave a message, send an email or send a letter but we get no response. When you go into the office, you are told the staff do not have the time to talk to you because you do not have a schedule, but you cannot schedule a meeting. It is a dog chasing his tail.

How Mr. Carney is so calm sitting there is beyond me. It is an absolute utter disgrace to wait 12 years and to be told something is going to be done only for it not to be done. It is about money. I have seen the picture of the young fella collecting water from the tap and bottling it. It is 2024. We are not in the 1880s. Let us be honest, at many committees here we come across a lot of people with a lot of problems and it is all down to dialogue, people talking and people coming up alternative moves. As Mr. Carney said, the simple solution is to go across the land. All of the farmers agreed to it.

They agreed that it was probably the fastest and cheapest option, but somebody, either the council or Irish Water, disagreed. Mr. Carney stated that the council and Irish Water do not get on. That is not surprising either. It is absolutely ludicrous that Mr. Carney paid an initial fee of €1,350 in 2015. As he said, that was probably based on 2013 figures. It seems to be a game of how much can be got first in grants, how much can be got from Joe Public and how much can be done at the cheapest price. Mr. Carney and his community are suffering as a result of that.

Mr. Carney referred to lime and so on. It is going back a long time, but I remembers county council water scheme where the water was so bad that people's showers and the washing machines, never mind their kettles, became disposable. I was told that day, "It will do no harm to you if you use it to make tea or coffee" but it destroyed washing machines and even showers. It was bonkers.

I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask but Mr. Carney has answered them already. He had no running water in the 1980s. It is no 2024 and people are still in the same situation. Mr. Carney indicated that there are many elderly people in the area. They are not going to be able to afford this, but I thought it was a constitutional right to have access to water. I refer back to what Senator Murphy said about Africa. You will see ads on British TV stations stating that for £5 a month, a whole village could have water. Mr. Carney could not get access to it in 12 years.

We have two service providers, namely the county council and Uisce Éireann. I can understand Mr. Carney's frustration.

Mr. Carney mentioned funding. I do not think there is a problem with funding; it is the fact that the left hand is not talking to the right hand and that there is a pig is in the middle. This was a situation where five different agencies had five different plans for one weir. It was a long time ago. I hear the Senator's frustration. I am of the view that the county council and Uisce Éireann should be back before the committee, along with Mr. Carney. We should bring them all in together because this is absolutely farcical. Mr. Carney is giving up his time and the entire community is working together. All the boxes are being ticked, but we are here again bearing about, more or less, the crap show - I will be polite with my language and intend no disrespect to anyone - that community has been putting up with.

There is a major health and safety issue involved. It is absolutely farcical that there are elderly people and that the washing conditions cannot be good. Mr. Carney said that a three-inch pipe would probably be massive. He referred to a flow. They can have pumps to pump water. I worked in it years ago so I know exactly about water mains, valves, scour wells and the whole lot.

Mr. Carney stated that, year on year, he has been assured that the grants have been secured and that the project had gone to tender. Some 12 years later, you could not even say there is light at the end of the tunnel because they have not dug the tunnel yet.

We might as well say it. I hate mincing my words and I do not like doing the politically-correct stuff. If I was to ask Mr. Carney straight, could he explain how he and all the families in the Kiltimagh area feel? How let down and worried do they feel? How much of an inconvenience is it, especially when Mr. Carney said that they agreed to everything and have got absolutely nothing? This is an atrocious indictment of those involved, whether it be the county council or Uisce Éireann, or possibly both. Nobody seems accountable. I might ask Mr. Carney to stick to the question about how he feels, without using the more profane language. We cannot have that inside here. Sometimes, we feel like we want to use that type of language. I would like to get Mr. Carney's honest-to-God gut feeling on how fed up, angry, tormented and left behind he feels.

If I was with Uisce Éireann or on the county council, I would be very embarrassed, with the technology available and in view of people's rights, to say that, in this day and age, it is not possible to supply proper water to a village, no matter where it is in the country. I ask Mr. Carney how he feels about that.

We are disappointed for starters, but being treated like stupid people - and that is by the Government officials whose salaries we pay - is more hurtful. Every Friday, they get their cheque. When you have people who make probably close to €200,000 telling you that you have no manners because you highlight it to this committee and now they have a free hand to punish you, that is misuse of power. If it was a private company, there should be two cheques on the Friday to say, "You are done. You are not working here anymore", or you would be out pushing a broom and cleaning the floor because you cannot deal with the public.

They have meetings and lead people on - and they have had one or two meetings - and tell them nonsense stories about flow capacity, engineers' reports, owls, grasshoppers and bees. It is the same old nonsense again. It is a pipe in the ground. It is not building a high-rise building. It is a simple project that could be done in probably two weeks.

We pay high taxes to support these programmes. All we want is a water supply. That is all. We pay house tax, motor tax, caring taxes - all the taxes. Food tax, fuel tax and all of that. All we want from Mayo County Council is the water supply it is paid to provide. This is its responsibility, and we are paying our share. It is telling old people and those on pensions that it cannot tell them how much they are going to pay or that it could be €5,000 or €10,000 in order to frighten them. Why?

That is another ludicrous thing. As I often say, you are buying a black lucky bag. You cannot see what is in it but you have to pay for it.

I am curious, looking back over the past two or three years, about the Cleragh community, especially in the summer. How does it source the water and get it back to the houses? Where is the collection point? How is water provided there? Is it by tap or what?

We had nothing except contaminated wells. We were going down to the river. You would put two wires on a battery pump for the cars and you drop the pipe in and fill up barrels. We were doing that.

The mystery is that a mile from my house there is an old school that is closed up. They put a tap in there and there is a water supply. We go there with buckets and barrels. That was done three years ago. The council did not do it and Irish Water did not do it. Nobody did it. They said they did not do it. I asked who did it, and who paid the contractor. We watched them for a week putting it in. They do not know. We said that it had to be one of the two. Which one was it? They said that none of them did it.

That is mind-boggling. Mr. Carney mentioned about making too much noise. I can see the picture here. There is no profit in running the water supply down to Mr. Carney's community. That is what this is about. Where I live, nearly 10,500 people have been operating on the basis of a boil water notice for six years. Those responsible cannot supply a tanker of water. The people in the area are paying for bottled water. When there was a broken water main in Dublin city a number of months ago, however, a water supply tanker was plonked nearby within two or three hours.

I understand Mr. Carney's frustration. Our duty as a committee is to go back to both of these organisations and say that we need answers as to why this has not progressed. We must also inform them that if we do not get the right answers and proper answers, they will be coming back in front of the committee, particularly as the way Mr. Carney's community has been treated is absolutely nonsensical, which is the polite word.

On the communication Mr. Carney referred to, those to whom I refer promised the committee that they would maintain close contact with the community.

Representatives of the community were to be available via the telephone, email and face-to-face meetings. There were to be regular updates on the upgrade of the works but that has never happened. That is this committee being misinformed, to be polite. I will be straight and say that this committee will approach them as soon as possible and ask hard questions. Why has nothing progressed since the original meeting with this committee? Why are people expected to sign a blank cheque? Why are people dismissed or accused of being heavy-handed when they raise concerns? I suspect Mr. Carney did not get the name of the person he was talking to. We need accountability and responsibility for the responses that he received on behalf of the community. It is bonkers that in 2024 the big boys with the big shovels can wave at the fellow in the field and say they are better than him and will call the shots. That is not the way democracy works in this country. It is not the way people should be treated. There is a basic right in Ireland to clean water that can be drunk and bathed in. The wells are contaminated and yet the stream is good enough to draw water. The supply is there. As Mr. Carney said, the supply had to be there. Somebody had to go down and put in that tap. Somebody had to dig out the water main. Somebody had to tap into that water main and tee it back into a tap.

I do not know where this is going to go but we will definitely take a stronger approach. The petitioners may not be the only people in a rural part of Ireland who have been treated in such a way. I have seen county development plans going back as far as 2000, but do not quote me on the year, whereby Irish Water, as it was then, refused to carry the water main and waste sewerage pipes into a zoned area for a new village because it was too far away and was going to cost too much. The petitioners are caught between a rock and a hard place. I could go on. The longer I listen to Mr. Carney, the angrier I get. He has been very badly let down and our committee has been disrespected. We are not here to score points. This committee is very strong on being people's last chance to have their voices heard, to get what should normally be a right and something that is written as a right in the Constitution. If we are here in 2024 and talking about a village in County Mayo that cannot get tap water, I fear for the worst regarding what is coming next. It is more difficult in the summer when everything has to be drawn. How do the people in the area feed animals and whatever else?

I cannot remember what year it was but we dealt with the Dunsink to Dundalk gas line, most of which runs through farmer fields. I know the craic. The biggest problem will be the land drain. I cannot understand it. The way things are going, the witnesses would be better off if they got a philanthropist to go back down to the tap, which is there the water main is, cut a tee off it and take it the shortest route, as the crow flies, and do it themselves.

That is what we asked. When they brought it that far, why did not they just bring it in? We asked them to go ahead and do whatever they had to do and to take their time but we would have water. This is the greenway all over again. There should be an audit conducted in the water department in Castlebar. I say that because there was an article in the newspaper approximately three years to the effect that hundreds of thousands of euro were left unspent in the office because they cannot figure out what is going on. The Minister is shovelling out money and the local authorities are getting it. Why is the money not going where the Minister wants it to go? If they are going to use our names and information to draw down money but then misuse it-----

It seems that accountability and responsibility across many Departments is absolutely zero. I feel strongly about this issue. This is my opinion. When county councils looked after water, we had an awful lot fewer problems. Things were resolved easily and if you had a broken water main, Johnny went down with a JCB and a con saw and put a galvanised band on it. The job would be done in 20 minutes and the valve could be turned back on, the tap could be flushed and away you went. Now it takes ten days for a report. An engineer has to come down to have a look at it. The engineer's report has to go off, despite the fact that we know that the problem is a broken four-inch water main. We can put a galvanised band on it first and then go about fixing it.

My suggestion is that we will write back and state it is totally and utterly unacceptable. We want to know who is responsible for preventing this from going forward. We want to know why it was that in 2015, €1,350 was collected.

It is the incompetence of those who did not start it when they were supposed to. Who is being punished? It is Joe Bloggs on the street. That is on the record and highlighted. The witnesses are right. If any of us were not doing our jobs or were making a total hames of it, we would be sacked. We would at least be called up to the top table and made accountable. As I said, people make mistakes. God knows that nobody is perfect. I can say that of myself. I say that people do not make mistakes but mistakes that make you who you are. You learn from them. However, Uisce Éireann or the council could not have learned.

There was an interesting line in his submission, where Mr. Carney stated, "We humbly request your support in expediting this process, whether through liaising with higher authorities or engaging advocacy groups." Who are the "higher authorities"? Was Mr. Carney thinking of the Minister?

That is grand. That is the way I shoot. I suggest that through the committee, we make this available to the responsible Minister and make him aware that this crap show has been going on for more than 12 years and that promises were made to the witnesses. It is strange that they have been promised the stars, the sun and the moon when all they want is water. I will make a suggestion if the committee is happy that we let the Minister know, whoever is responsible for this, that communication seems to have broken down between the council and Uisce Éireann. The witnesses are stuck in the middle and nobody wants to talk to them because they are banging the drum too hard. They are only banging the drum to get a drop of water. It is ludicrous.

Who had Mr. Carney in mind when he mentioned "advocacy groups"? A European ombudsman is connected to the committee. That is true of all of the ombudsmen offices. I am thinking outside the box. We should be making the Ombudsman aware that there are entities within this country that are being paid by public funding to serve the people who pay their taxes, yet the witnesses have been shut down and punished for being too loud. They are expected to pay for something and do not know how much it is going to cost. When you go to buy a car, there is a price tag. When you go into a shop, there are price tags.

That is absolutely right. We need to write to Uisce Éireann, the county council and the Minister.

If that is not done and a prompt reply is not back, we will refer it to the Ombudsman here or the European Ombudsman. It is a rights issue because the witnesses are being very badly mistreated. It reminds me of a very funny story from a long time ago about a man looking for a stopcock for his garden. He hired a metal detector, which you could do at the time, and went out the back with his boots on. He had never used a metal detector before but had a fair idea that when it made a loud beep there would be something there. Two or three days later he came back saying the bloody thing did not work at all. He had dug almost 16 holes in the back garden and had found nothing. Every time he took a step forward his steel toecap set off the metal detector. He lost faith in the metal detector and never found the stopcock.

We could put that story in the same context here. How the community is being treated is atrocious. The suggestion that I and Senator Murphy are making is that we write to the Departments and the Minister asking for a prompt reply on what the bloody hell is happening. If this is not satisfactory we will take it to either the European Ombudsman or the Ombudsman here to have it investigated. It is a very poor service. A business run in such a way would not last very long. Is Senator Murphy happy with that?

I thank the committee for looking into this and following it up. The members are right that it is disgrace. We should have water. Twelve years is way too long to wait. We are not looking for it for free. We are looking to pay what was demanded and we are willing to pay it. However, we cannot commit to the unknown. How can an application be made again when the bodies involved do not know how much it will cost? Will the money run out again through doing surveys? It is frustrating.

There would be a better chance of emptying the Red Sea with a bucket with no ass in it. That is how it is finishing here today. I thank Mr. Carney from coming before the committee again to speak to us. It has been very informative, and that is an understatement to be very honest. I have already said what we consider to be the next steps and we will write to the relevant Departments. I will suspend the meeting for five minutes to allow the witnesses to leave.