Legal actions filed on behalf of people made sick by contaminated water in Gorey

At least a dozen legal actions have been filed on behalf of people made sick by contaminated water fed through the public supply in Gorey, Co Wexford last year.

One of the claimants included among several letters of claim filed on Friday is just five-years-old.

An investigation into the incident published last week found the four-day supply of unsafe drinking water left 46 people ill and one person hospitalised.

It identified human error in failing to quickly detect the problem which arose from a power failure at the Creagh Water Treatment Plant on August 19th last year, causing chlorine dosing pumps to fail.

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Following the report’s publication, at least a dozen letters of claim were filed against a number of litigants including Irish Water and Wexford County Council.

Further proceedings could be issued. Patrick McKee of David M Turner Solicitors said he is currently taking instructions from the remainder of about 25 clients, a number of whom made contact following the report’s publication.

“What you are looking at is severe gastroenteritis, severe diarrhoea and severe vomiting,” he said of the health effects suffered.

Mr McKee will seek medical assessments of those whose pre-existing ailments are believed to have been made worse following the consumption of unsafe water.

“We would be hopeful that given the contents of the report that the responsible parties would come to the table early,” and avoid protracted litigation, Mr McKee said. “These are certainly not trivial matters.”

‘Entirely unacceptable’

Neither Irish Water nor Wexford County Council commented regarding the legal actions.

The investigation, carried out by the firm Aengus Consulting, noted that as a consequence of several failures including insufficient alarm systems at the plant, water had entered the public drinking supply without the appropriate level of disinfection.

It described this as being “entirely unacceptable in public health terms”.

“The disinfection system, consisting of sodium hypochlorite pumped into the treated water, ceased to operate due to mechanical failure but human error in not detecting and escalating the problems extended the timeline of the incident by approximately four days,” it said.

Irish Water is responsible for treatment plants including the Creagh facility which is operated under a service level agreement with Wexford County Council.

The local authority has committed to several improvements at the plant in the wake of last year’s incident.

Following the investigation report, Wexford County Council issued a statement in which it said it “again wishes to most sincerely apologise to all those people affected”.

“Wexford County Council is fully satisfied that the works already carried out and the further upgrades committed to by Irish Water will ensure that there will be no repetition of this water quality failure at the Creagh Plant,” it said.