This article is from page 19 of the 2011-09-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 19 JPG
CLARE County Council faces a bill of up to € 1.5 million to fix a large number of metered stop valves which were installed incorrectly by developers during the property boom.
Between 1,500 and 2,000 homes in the county are believed to still have the defective valves – which were intended for use in warmer climates and are prone to break during cold spells, such as those witnessed over the past two winters.
Clare County Council has repaired a number of these valves for free over the past two years as many of the developers who installed the valves were either non-contactable or out of business.
It was revealed at last night’s meeting of Clare County Council that the local authority had no funds available to it to provide repairs of this kind in the future.
It was also revealed that the cost of repairs for the existing stock of defective valves could come to between € 1.1 million and € 1.5 million.
“I know that the council have had to do a lot retrofit work for people in these houses because of the hardship that we have seen over the last couple of winters and that a lot of work has not been done to proper specifications,” said Cllr Gerry Flynn (Ind).
“Let’s hope that this winter will not be as bad as previous winters, but if it is then we are going to get a large number of people who will have difficulty with this. The problem is that the specifications were not followed.
“The quality of the metres was not the issue but the type of the valves were made for a warmer climate and they won’t stand up to the lower temperatures. There is no funding to fix this problem so the people who are losing out are the people who bought properties in good faith and will have to go without water.”
According to a council spokesperson the defective valves have been installed on houses all over the county and are not confined to any particular type of house or contractor.
“It is awful to see water flowing down footpaths and roads, especially when there is no clean water in the houses beside them. The general public should not have to suffer because of the bad work done by certain contractors,” said Joe Cooney (FG).