The quickest solution to cleaning up Galway's contaminated water supply will take up to six months to implement, the city's councillors were told last night.
In the first city council meeting since much of the county was ordered to boil their tap water three weeks ago, city manager Joe MacGrath defended the council's handing of what he called the most challenging issue ever faced by the local authority.
The councillors spent much of the first half of the meeting roundly criticising officials over the lack of communication, but vented most of their anger towards Minister for the Environment Dick Roche who refused to hold a cross-party meeting about the issue last Friday.
Director of services for transportation and infrastructure Ciarán Hayes said the local authority was currently working on an interconnecting pipe to transport treated water from Tuam to the city.
The old Terryland water treatment plant - which treats about 30 per cent of the city's water supply and is incapable of filtering out the deadly cryptosporidium parasite - will be phased out as the additional supply is delivered from the Tuam system.
"The indications are that's September. We are looking at bringing that forward. We will go ahead with the package treatment plant but the fact is it will take nine months to a year," Mr Hayes told the meeting.
In the interim, the city will increase the current water supply from the Tuam plant. That too will take some time to get off the ground.
"We're not in a position to give a date on that. If I was to hazard a guess you're talking in the region of five or six weeks. That's my best guess."
The long-term solution was to build a new treatment plant at Terryland, but that was four to five years down the road, he said.
When it was built it would likely cost "far in excess" of the €21 million originally estimated.
The council is also looking at taking the pressure off the Terryland plant by buying in water from Oughterard and Spiddal to service Moycullen and Bearna.
The city manager hit back at allegations by the Minister that the council had done nothing to avert the water crisis that is affecting 90,000 householders. Mr Roche stated the council had made no application for funding for a new treatment plant despite the fact that €21.5 million had been approved in 2002.
Mr MacGrath told the meeting when he took over in February 2005 there was the equivalent of just one engineer overseeing nine new water schemes, costing taxpayers €100 million.
"People may ask why didn't I reassign from other areas. We have a lot of priority areas. I wasn't in a position to reassign from other internal sources," he said.
In December 2005 he applied to Mr Roche's department for funding for five staff and was given approval for two engineers, who started work last June.
When it emerged that the water investment programme would cost €233 million he applied last February for six additional staff.
"We're still waiting for a response. I raised it with the Minister last Friday. I emphasised the urgency of getting that staff," he told the councillors.
Sinn Féin Cllr Daniel Callanan said it was "just laughable" that Mr Roche could blame the crisis on the council when it had such serious staffing problems.
"Our white knight wasn't such a white knight after all when you see the figures," he quipped.
Meanwhile, the Health Service Executive said the number of people who had come down with the bug remained at 155.