More than 140 complaints about water in the city were made so far this year, with more than half of these relating to discoloration and nearly a quarter from people saying they were ill as a result of the water.<\/p>\n
Data provided to The Echo by Uisce \u00c9ireann on foot of a freedom of information request showed that 141 complaints were made to the utility body by people in the city between January and November of this year.<\/p>\n
In general, complaints have decreased from the start of the year but are starting to rise again after lower summer figures.<\/p>\n
There were 20 complaints made last January, 23 in February, 21 in March, 11 in April, seven in May, 13 in June, 12 in July and down to two in August. But this then jumped to nine in September, 11 in October and 12 in the month of November.<\/p>\n
Of these complaints, almost half related to discoloration of water. This was most prevalent in the beginning of the year, with the start of the year providing the most discoloration complaints \u2014 13 complaints were made in January, 15 in February and 12 in March. In all, there were 70 such complaints in total.<\/p>\n
The next most common reason, accounting for nearly one in four complaints, was \u201creported illness\u201d, with 32 people saying they had become ill as a result of the water.<\/p>\n
There were also 17 complaints about water quality in general and 16 complaints about water outages, as well as two complaints about the taste of the water, two about the water\u2019s odour, and one about a boil-water notice.<\/p>\n
Of the 139 complaints, just one was listed as being still \u2018open\u2019 and that was a November complaint about illness as a result of the water.<\/p>\n
People Before Profit\/Solidarity councillor Brian McCarthy told The Echo: \u201cFrom the day this started, they\u2019ve been using statistics to mask the real scale of the problem and the impact it\u2019s having.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s as bad now as it ever has been, but a lot of people don\u2019t bother reporting it anymore, because Uisce \u00c9ireann just log the call and then do nothing about it,\u201d Mr McCarthy said.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cAs well as that, you\u2019ll always have a temporary improvement after they do flushing, but that\u2019s just a stopgap, not a solution.\u201d Mr McCarthy added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real scandal, though, is that for three years, between Uisce \u00c9ireann, Cork City Council, and the Government, they\u2019ve done literally nothing to support people affected.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhere are the alternative clean-water supplies for people who can\u2019t use what\u2019s coming out of the tap?\n <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are the water tankers for communities?<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are the bottled-water vouchers?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 140 complaints about water in the city were made so far this year, with more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[18,440,19,17,14187,133,446],"class_list":{"0":"post-248436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-irish-water","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-uisce-eireann"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115771689276535967","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}