Water outages from Kildare's Allen Reservoir 'no longer acceptable'

A Kildare TD has slammed the latest water outage affecting the Allen reservoir in Kildare as “no longer acceptable”.

Aidan Farrelly of the Social Democrats, was reacting after Irish water shut down the reservoir on Monday evening, May 11, citing “critically low levels over the last week.”

“This is becoming massively disruptive for the people, especially those with young children, who need reliable access to water”, Deputy Farrelly said this week.

“Thousands of people in Allenwood, Coill Dubh, Prosperous, Killina, Derrinturn, Kilmeague and Robertstown are being affected.

“I don’t understand how a few weeks of dry weather can leave a reservoir in such a critical position – especially after the wet winter we had. It seems like it’s a feast or a famine.”

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Deputy Farrelly's party colleague, Cllr Paula Mulroe, speaking on Friday, May 29 Cllr Mulroe said that although water supply had now been restored after days of disruption, it would be “optimistic” to say that the problem has been resolved.

“They have been doing a good bit of work on it in recent times, so Uisce Éireann have fixed a couple of leaks, and also they're pushing water along through the pipeline to bring up the level.”, she said.

“It will probably have a short to medium-term impact (on the problem).

“This has been going on for months, so for years it was that there were burst water mains up in Allen, but there's been something going on for the guts of 12 months, if not more.”

Since the end of March and the beginning of April, Cllr Mulroe points out, residents have been getting notices of water disruption due to issues at Allen Reservoir, “on a weekly basis.”

During the May bank holiday there was no water for 24 hours in some areas, she points out.

“Water has been restored at the moment, and we haven't had any further interruptions.

“I wouldn't be confident that the problem has been fixed. From my understanding, they're looking at measures to keep the supply up for the moment, but whether it's been fixed, I wouldn't be able to stand over that.”

Deputy Farrell and Cllr Mulroe are to meet with Uisce Éireann to get more details as to what its long-term plan is for the area.

Cllr Mulroe said she was also concerned about a lack of accountability in terms of Uisce Eireann.

“Our water supply is no longer under the remit of local authorities and Uisce Eireann has little or no accountability for local issues,” she said.

Susan Gallacher is a resident of Lullymore, Co Kildare, one of the areas affected by recent water outages.

According to Susan, the water supply problem has continued in the area for the past three years, but was “supposed to be improved by the start of 2026.”

Residents were told the pipe work “wasn't fit for purpose”, she says, and needed to be replaced.

Now, this year, things have just gotten worse, Susan adds.

“It's constantly running on low water supply, so it's washing machines, dishwashers...and generally now every morning you're getting up to see if you have water. It's scandalous how bad it's got and how bad it's been allowed to get.

“We just got turned back on yesterday, and it was out since one o'clock on Monday; it was off for almost 24 hours then it came back on but now the pipes are air-locked.

“Our neighbours have had to get plumbers in for their shower because they can't get it back on, so it's causing a lot of financial problems for people as well as just the constant inconvenience of it.”

Although water supply has been restored in her area of Lullymore, Susan says she has little confidence that the problem has been permanently resolved.

“It's made up every week what's going on, but the long and short of it is they don't have the supply for the area, and they're not sure what they're going to do about it.”