A POST CLAIMING that water in Dublin would be turned off for two days, posted to a page dedicated to warnings about Garda checkpoints and speed camera vans in Dublin, widely exaggerated the reports on which it was based.

“Water will be turned off in Dublin for 2 days!” the 12 August Facebook post read, along with screenshots from an article that had been published on Dublin Live the same day. However, that article does not make the same claim that the Facebook post does.

“List of affected areas as Dublin faces two days of water disruption,” the headline of that article said.

The article reported that Uisce Éireann would work to minimise the impact of their work on a water main, namely by filling up reservoirs to mitigate the risk of water outages.

At no point did it imply that Dublin’s water supply would be cut off for two days.

Uisce Éireann, previously called Irish Water, also told The Journal that the works which the post had been referring to have since been completed with “no major outages in Dublin or Wicklow”.

But was water in Dublin disrupted?

“Some areas of Kildare that were closest to the pipeline did experience water outages,” a spokesperson for Uisce Éireann told The Journal, adding that alternative water supplies were provided to those affected. “There were no major outages in Dublin or Wicklow.”

Uisce Éireann told The Journal that a watermain connecting the Ballymore Eustace Water Treatment Plant in Kildare and the Saggart Reservoir in Co Dublin had been repaired.

An image of the repair Uisce Éireann Uisce Éireann

“The Greater Dublin Area is heavily dependent on this large pipeline which carries 220 million litres of water each day (80 Olympic swimming pools). It supplies about one third of the GDA’s drinking water. The pipe is over 25km long and is about the same height as an average adult,” Uisce Éireann said.

“An unplanned burst on this pipeline would result in unplanned and widespread water outages that could take weeks to repair and affect up to 1.7 million people.”

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