Kildare Residents Contact Uisce Eireann Every Four Hours, Investigation Reveals

Water outages alone were responsible for nearly half of all the reasons residents reached out to the utility.

Kildare residents logged an average of six service tickets per day with Uisce Eireann for the past six and a half years.

Water outages alone were responsible for nearly half of all the reasons residents reached out to the utility.

On average, each outage affected 837 premises and lasted over seven hours, leaving residents without essential water services and causing significant disruption to daily life.

The towns of Newbridge, Naas, Leixlip, Celbridge, and Kildare Town emerged as the hardest-hit areas, logging the highest number of customer service tickets, while Celbridge had the most outages.

The report's findings have prompted calls for urgent action to address the escalating crisis and improve the reliability of Kildare’s water supply.

Citizen journalist Treasa Keegan, the creator of The Speaker Podcast, spearheaded the investigation, using data obtained through a Freedom of Information request to Uisce Éireann.

"It’s disgraceful that a decade after the creation of Uisce Éireann, things are getting worse, not better," said Keegan.

She added: "In Kildare alone, someone has contacted Uisce Éireann every four hours, every day for years, and around half the time it’s to report an outage. There were over 240 outages in Kildare in 2023 alone -more than one every two days."

She said families are massively inconvenienced when there’s an outage or a water quality issue - not to mention the risks to vulnerable people, parents making baby bottles, or those working from home.

Public representatives featured in a special episode of The Speaker Podcast titled "BURST" have echoed Keegan's concerns, calling for immediate action to address the pressing infrastructure issues facing the county for years.

Meanwhile, the utility has launched a text alert system.

It states: "If something occurs affecting the water supply to your home or business, you need to know about it as soon as possible."

Residents who sign up are notified of any planned water supply issues in their area.

They also receive alerts of any unplanned interruptions or water quality events that last longer than four hours.

In a statement to Kfm, a spokesperson for Uisce Eireann said: "Our customer contact centre, which is available 24/7, is briefed so that agents are informed and ready to assist customers on local service issues. Customers get in touch with a range of queries including updates on outages, queries re meter readings or low pressure events. Across Kildare, there are approximately 120,000 customers with individual water service connections and less than 13% of them (15,578) have raised a service request in the last six and a half years."

They added: "We have a Code of Practice in place for dealing with vulnerable customers, communications, complaint handling, metering and network operations. We also have specific notification requirements for customers registered on the Special and Priority Services Registers in accordance with the ‘Code of Practice on Vulnerable Customers’."