The village of Ballivor has been without water for over four days now, but Uisce Éireann does not appear to be accountable to me as a public representative nor to this House despite the billions of euro we are giving it to invest in upgrading our water infrastructure. There have been really poor communications, there is no end in sight and the school has been closed for the past two days. In 2019, when I was first elected a councillor, the Ballivor reservoir project was a priority. By 2021, Uisce Éireann told me it was shovel-ready. In 2024, it told me it would be on site by 2025. Here we are in 2026 without a shovel in the ground. What am I supposed to tell the people of Ballivor and the wider Meath West area, where there are issues in Clonard, Trim, Rathmolyon and many other places with frequent outages? We need the reservoir built in Ballivor but we also need to hold Uisce Éireann to account.

Sentiment score: -0.03