Andrew Walsh

BUSINESSES IN LEIXLIP say frequent water outages are costing them thousands in lost trade, forcing cafés to stockpile water and leaving hairdressers boiling kettles to finish washing customers’ hair.

The Co Kildare town has been hit by a string of outages in recent months, including three separate disruptions in just over one week in September.

Kate Luan Collins, who owns Willow and Wild coffee shops in Leixlip and Maynooth, told The Journal that her Leixlip premises now keeps four 20-litre drums of water in its shed because of the frequency of the problem.

Even that is not enough to allow the café to remain open when its supply goes. “If the water goes, we close,” Collins said.

Willow and Wild coffee shop in Leixlip. Willow and Wild Willow and Wild

“If you can’t have hot water, you can’t sanitise dishes, you can’t clean.”

The stored water instead allows staff to safely clean down the kitchen if supply disappears in the middle of service.

“The fact that we actually have to stockpile water, and that’s not to stay open, that’s just enough to boil to actually clean and close our kitchen properly,” Collins said.

In this day and age, we’re stockpiling water. It’s insane.

Willow and Wild was disrupted on three trading days last month, including two Sundays when Collins said the café had to close at around midday, cutting short one of its busiest trading days.

The third outage did not result in a full closure, but Collins said the business still made a loss.

“I was 100% at a loss last week,” Collins said.

“Our margins are so tight that everything I do is on my forecasting for a normal week. So when I don’t get to have my normal week, it doesn’t work.”

Lost takings, wasted fresh food and reduced hours for staff all add to the cost, while Collins said the unpredictability makes staffing and food orders difficult to plan.

She also said she sometimes receives several Uisce Éireann alerts without losing supply, while on other occasions the water has gone without her receiving one.

“If I was certain that when I get a text that says there is a planned outage on this day, well then I know not to put staff on. I know not to put in an order,” she said.

“I have to open and hope.”

Collins has also lodged a formal complaint with Uisce Éireann over the outages. In its response, seen by The Journal, the utility noted that she had reported being forced to close the coffee shop six times this year.

‘Washed my hair with a cup’

A short distance away, Black Angel hair salon owner Orla Kinsella has developed her own contingency plan for when the taps run dry.

The salon has a water tank which staff ration when supply is lost, prioritising customers in the middle of treatments.

If it runs out, staff have had to buy bottled water, boil kettles and use cups to rinse clients’ hair.

“We have had to cancel clients,” Kinsella said.

Black Angel hair salon in Leixlip.

Some customers can wash their hair at home before returning to the salon, while others have been able to leave with colour still in their hair and wash it out themselves.

“I’ll ring the clients and say, ‘Do you have water at home?’” Kinsella said.

“If it’s a colour that they can leave the salon with, I’ll say, ‘Go home and shampoo it yourself.’”

“My biggest problem I’m finding with it is you’ll get a client that will tell someone, ‘They washed my hair with a cup’, or, ‘They only gave me one shampoo’,” she added.

They don’t tell anyone my salon actually stayed open and tried to do a service.

Kinsella said staff have become increasingly frustrated with the disruption and, if she has to close and send them home, she still has to pay them.

She estimated that the salon is directly affected around three times a year.

Repeated bursts

The recent problems form part of a longer-running pattern of outages in Leixlip and surrounding areas.

Uisce Éireann confirmed major bursts affecting customers in Leixlip, Maynooth and Celbridge on several occasions this summer.

A burst on the R148 Maynooth Road outside Leixlip disrupted supply on 20 September.

One week later, another major burst occurred on the same road, with Uisce Éireann apologising for what it described as a “second burst in the area in the space of one week”.

There was also disruption in Leixlip on 23 September, when Uisce Éireann’s service records listed hydrant repair works in the town.

One Leixlip resident showed The Journal 17 text messages received from Uisce Éireann since April relating to supply issues in the area (individual alerts don’t necessarily mean every customer covered lost water).

Numerous water outages have been recorded in Leixlip so far this year. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Frustration has also spilled over onto local social media groups, where residents have been encouraged to lodge formal complaints with Uisce Éireann and the Commission for Regulation of Utilities.

A template shared in a Leixlip Facebook group last week called for figures on outages and burst mains over the past five years and questioned whether the network has sufficient capacity for future residential and industrial demand.

In a response to a formal complaint from Collins, Uisce Éireann acknowledged that its “large and ageing” network is at times “stretched to meet demand”.

‘It just needs to be replaced’

Kildare North Fine Gael TD Joe Neville, who lives in Leixlip and has repeatedly raised the issue in the Dáil, met Uisce Éireann representatives this week.

Neville is pushing for the replacement of a major water main serving the area to be included in Uisce Éireann’s capital investment plans.

He said the 450mm main, which carries water from the Leixlip Water Treatment Plant towards Maynooth and feeds other parts of the local network, is around five decades old.

“That pipe then is the one that’s continuing to burst,” Neville said.

He said Uisce Éireann is carrying out pressure assessments to investigate what may be contributing to the bursts.

There’s no benefit in waiting.

“It just has to be done because ultimately… that pipe just needs to be replaced.”

Neville said he came away from this week’s meeting more optimistic that the replacement would be included in Uisce Éireann’s capital programme, although he acknowledged it would be a major project.

He said the existing situation could be “catastrophic” for local businesses.

“If you can’t be sure that you can open your business and you can’t guarantee your customers and even guarantee your staff that you can be open, that really puts your business in a really difficult position,” he said.

Neville previously raised the issue in the Dáil in June, when he cited outages in April and June, including one which resulted in pupils at Confey Community College being sent home.

‘Stop putting a plaster on it’

Local councillor Nuala Killeen said frustration in the town has now reached a “crescendo”.

Killeen is seeking proposals for a business reimbursement scheme and a firm timeline for upgrading the infrastructure when Uisce Éireann appears before Kildare County Council in November.

“Businesses can’t plan around a water supply that keeps failing,” Killeen said.

Killeen said Uisce Éireann’s communication around individual incidents has improved and stressed that she did not blame crews carrying out emergency repairs.

But she said repeatedly fixing individual failures was no longer sufficient.

“They have to stop putting a plaster on a failing main and call it a repair,” she said.

Killeen also questioned the cumulative cost of repeatedly repairing the main and carrying out associated road remediation, arguing that it should strengthen the case for permanent works.

“How many times does it have to go before Uisce Éireann accepts that it needs to be replaced?” Killeen said.

“The patience, the goodwill and the patience have expired.”

There’s no apathy. There’s just anger.

For Collins, the solution is similarly straightforward.

“I just want a proper plan,” the coffee shop owner said.

She also wants financial support considered for small businesses repeatedly forced to shut.

“It’s huge,” she said of losing a day’s trade.

“There’s no compensation. And your insurance doesn’t cover it.”

In response to The Journal, Uisce Éireann said it understood the “concern and disruption” caused by recent outages, which it said were primarily the result of burst water mains.

The utility said it is prioritising improvements to a 4.2km stretch of water main between Leixlip Pump Station and Blakestown, “parts of which are up to 50 years old”.

It said longer-term investment would “strengthen the network, improve the reliability of supply and provide greater resilience for local communities”, including 1.2km of new water main along Station Road and work aimed at reducing pressure fluctuations.

The programme is currently going through the design and approvals process. Uisce Éireann did not provide a timeline for when the works would be completed.

Are you a small business owner elsewhere in Ireland who has been impacted by water outages or supply issues? Let us know at andrew.walsh@thejournal.ie