It may be a technology hub and Ireland's tidiest town, but Ennis is struggling to clean up its water, writes Ruadhán Mac Cormaic
On September 24th, 1997, with the country intoxicated by the bullishness of those dotcom days, Ennis saw off the challenges of 49 competitors to be named Ireland's Information Age Town. It was to be a watershed: with lavish IT investment would come new jobs, financial stability and social rejuvenation. And of equal symbolic importance, it was Ennis that would lead, Ennis that would be Ireland's outrider to the technological promised land.
At the conferral of the title at Dublin's Point Theatre that night, the president of the town's Chamber of Commerce, TJ Waters, reasonably predicted that this investment in technological infrastructure would "bring benefits, not just in economic terms, but also in education, health and community care".
Eight years on, the Co Clare town is struggling with a much more fundamental infrastructural problem - a water supply unfit for human consumption. The Mayor of Ennis, Frankie Neylon (Ind), recently described it as "something close to what you would come across in the developing world".
This week the town's 30,000 residents were told for the third time in four months that the town's water is not fit to drink. The warning came only a week after the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Ennis Town Council lifted a previous "boil notice" imposed for almost a month in response to an E.coli contamination.
In June, a similar notice followed the diagnosis of five pre-school children living in different parts of Ennis with Cryptosporidiosis, a disease with such symptoms as abdominal cramps, fatigue, nausea, vomiting and low-grade fever. The HSE has advised the young, the sick and those in care not to drink from the water supply for the next two years, by which time a new water treatment plant will have been built.
"I think people would accept a hitch or a malfunction - I think people would live with that," says Gary Stack, principal of Ennis National School. "But it's three times now in the last four months, so it's not a glitch, it's a fundamental problem."
The Department of the Environment's announcement last month that a new €13 million water treatment plant would be built by October 2007 was widely welcomed, but in the meantime, according to Neylon, "everyone is in agreement with one thing: we won't have safe water until then."
Though the council denies this, he says the current treatment plant is operating at several times its capacity, and apportions most of the blame to the Government, which, he argues, failed to make adequate provision for the town's rapidly growing population over the past decade.
"Our biggest problem is that the town has mushroomed over the last 10 years; the population has gone to 30,000 from about 7,000 in 10 years. The infrastructure should have been there before they allowed all the planning permissions for thousands of houses."
Local Green Party councillor Brian Meaney has called for vouchers to be introduced to subsidise the cost of bottled water for low-income households.
IN DUNNES STORES on the town's O'Connell Street, row upon row of five-litre bottles line the walls, and local suppliers report brisk business ("one man's misfortune is another man's good fortune" says one).
"There are people in this town and it's costing them €50 or €60 a week for drinking water," says Neylon. "Day-care centres, hospitals for the elderly they should be looked after. For some people in our town, even €10 a week is an extra €10 they can't afford. It's not good enough. If they [ the Government] have to find money for something, they find it. This is a health hazard to people."
He says local anger is all the more intense for the recent council decision to cease its refuse collection and privatise the service.
"I had three meetings last night, and what's coming back to me is 'You can't provide us with a refuse collection and you can't provide us with water. What's happening?' We had all of these things when we had nothing; now we're in the Celtic Tiger and we can't provide them."
Ennis General Hospital is paying around €1,500 a month for bottled water, and expects to continue doing so for the next two years. By the time the new treatment plant is operational, the hospital will have spent €36,000 on bottles of Ballygowan.
What is bad for health is bad for business. The town's Chamber of Commerce is concerned at the impact on Ennis's reputation and the potential hit to local tourism. This development has done little to enhance Ennis's appeal as Ireland's tidiest town in 2005.
Paul Madden, manager of the Temple Gate Hotel, says three recent cancellations were directly linked to the adverse publicity over water safety. The hotel is offering bottled water at cost price and is having ice cubes shipped in from Britain.
"It's definitely hurting business," Madden says. "There's no doubt that it's costing me money; every time I sell a bottle of water at cost price, provide ice from the UK or fill table jugs with bottled water, I lose out."
The town engineer, Tom Tiernan, says the council is looking into temporary measures to alleviate such pressure. "We're investigating possibilities as regards temporary facilities that would provide greater comfort. Though it's not an exact science, and nothing can be guaranteed, we have a lot of reason to be reasonably confident that we can get through the next two years."
"Water is like electricity," says Gary Stack of Ennis National School. "It's such an intrinsic part of your lifestyle. You take it so much for granted. It's like an ESB strike, when suddenly you realise you can't do the most basic things.
"Everybody is cross," Stack adds. "You think that town planners plan towns, and then you realise after a while that they don't. Housing estates just chase each other around the town. Why did somebody not foresee this?"