Irish Water has confirmed it “inadvertently” contacted about 20 critically dependent people in the wrong area of Connemara to advise them to boil their water after a contaminant had been detected.
The utility said it has since contacted the people to clarify the situation and apologise for any confusion.
A boil water notice for a public water system supplying 1,200 people in the Leitir Mór/Tír an Fhia area of south Connemara was issued on January 21st. This was on the advice of the Health Service Executive following the detection of cryptosporidium.
The contamination, which affected Galway city and large parts of the county in 2007, can cause gastrointestinal illness and result in hospitalisation.
The notice in local press and on social media was followed up by direct contact with Irish Water customers on the “critical dependency list”, regarded as vulnerable due to chronic or serious illness. In some cases, their designated contact person was phoned.
Critical list
One of the people contacted was
Nora Cooney
, who lives in Leitir Mór, but who is a designated contact person for a relative of hers who is on the “critical dependency list” for Rosmuc.
Ms Cooney told The Irish Times that she checked with an Irish Water representative, and was told that the boil notice applied to Rosmuc, where her relatives live.
After further checking, she established that it applied to her own area of Leitir Mór.
She received a phone call on January 26th to say that the notice had been lifted, and assumed that this applied to her area.
She stopped boiling water, but when there was no reference to it on Raidió na Gaeltachta on January 27th, she contacted the radio station’s Iris Aniar programme and was told that the notice was still in place.
Ms Cooney then contacted Irish Water and followed up with a subsequent email to confirm the situation. She was phoned by one of the utility’s customer services team offering a reduction in her bill.
Unfamiliar geography
Ms Cooney said that she felt the company was not familiar with the geography of Connemara, and seemed to be unaware of the distance between areas such as Rosmuc and Leitir Mór.
“These two areas are a good 45 minutes to an hour apart by road,”she said.
She said that the company did offer people living in the Gaeltacht the option to speak to a representative in Irish.
“But I spoke in English as I felt it was so confusing that I’d better communicate with them in English,” she said.
Irish Water said that it had “fully investigated” the incident, and discovered that 20 critically dependent people had been contacted inadvertently.
“We have confirmed to this customer that they must continue to boil their water as they live in the affected area,” it said.
“The critically dependent customer for whom they are the designated contact does not live in the affected area and does not need to boil their water.”
Water must be boiled for food preparation and for brushing teeth, it said, and this continued to apply to the Leitir Mór/ Tír an Fhia areas.
As a precautionary measure, Irish Water also issued a boil notice for the Loughrea public water scheme in Co Galway .
