{"id":613376,"date":"2026-07-31T12:14:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T12:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613376\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T12:14:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T12:14:39","slug":"epa-issue-warning-as-e-coli-found-in-private-well-water-supplies-across-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/613376\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA issue warning as E.coli found in private well water supplies across Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hotels, creches, nursing homes, and schools dependent on getting water supplied from private wells<\/a> should ask whether it is \u201csafe to drink\u201d, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).<\/p>\n

It comes as one in 20 supplies could be affected by e.coli bacteria found in contaminated drinking water, which is provided by \u201csmall private supplies\u201d. According to the latest report from the EPA looking into private water supplies, there was a 95.5% compliance rate with the e.coli standard.<\/p>\n

Out of the 1,600 systems registered with local authorities across Ireland, 67 well supplies failed the standard in 2025.<\/p>\n

EPA programme manager Noel Byrne said there was concern that well suppliers had no legal obligation to register with their local authorities, which leads to water supplies not being sampled every year.<\/p>\n

In Cork, for example, over 250 well supplies are monitored, whereas in Co Mayo \u2014 which has a larger rural population \u2014 there are only 20 registered supplies.<\/p>\n

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can say one in 20 supplies failed to meet e.coli standards in the small private supplies,\u201d Mr Byrne told the Irish Examiner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to say that sounds small, but actually that is not good enough. One person getting sick because they drank contaminated water is now sick for a day or so with vomiting or diarrhoea, and that can be even more serious depending on the contamination that they get.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a very young child or a very elderly person, or someone immunocompromised [was affected], that\u2019s just not good enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Byrne said people should \u201chave the right to good quality water, particularly if they are on commercial premises and people are providing water to them and that meets standards\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t okay for someone to get sick and wonder what happened or how did I pick up that bug, because it can make you quite sick,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Additionally, 14 privately-run community water schemes which supply over 1,850 systems had e.coli failures in 2025. This was down by 10 when compared to 2024.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, more than 19,000 people receiving drinking water through the community-run supply are still seeing trihalomethanes over the regular standard.<\/p>\n

The EPA said these numbers show the contamination in 17 private water schemes last year. This was down by two when compared to 2024. Around 370 schemes are serving 194,000 people.<\/p>\n

Trihalomethanes are created when chlorine is used to disinfect water. These chemicals are formed when there is an excess of organic matter \u2014 such as decaying plants and algae \u2014 in the water source.<\/p>\n

According to the HSE, the potential risk is very low over a typical lifetime of consumption. Additionally, short-term use of drinking water which exceeds guidelines is unlikely to have an impact on human health.<\/p>\n

However, it has been highlighted that some of the individual trihalomethane chemicals could pose both short- and long-term health effects, including dizziness; fatigue; headache; sleepiness; incoordination; dull chest pain; liver damage; kidney damage; testicle damage; and skin sores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hotels, creches, nursing homes, and schools dependent on getting water supplied from private wells should ask whether it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[269],"tags":[5606,29221,18,440,2741,60,19,17,133,1373],"class_list":["post-613376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-childrens-health","tag-consumer-affairs","tag-eire","tag-environment","tag-health-news","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-sustainability"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117014539116250397","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613376","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=613376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}