A WEEKEND water outage at Shannonvale not only left families without supply, it also had a major impact on the Shannonvale Community Festival.

According to Alan Dromey, the chairman of Shannonvale Community Group: 'The latest outage had a major impact on the local community: two separate breakages occurred simultaneously within the village, highlighting once again the ongoing fragility of the network.'

He said: 'The community now needs a firm commitment and delivery timeline to bring an end to years of ongoing issues with water breaks and disruption of supply to residents and local businesses.'

Another resident sent The Southern Star a short video of black water coming from his kitchen tap after the break at Shannonvale and Ballinascarthy was fixed.

The resident, Stephen Ferguson, expressed his annoyance by pointing out that €300,000 has been earmarked to restore and rebuild the Kilnagross Footbridge near the Clonakilty Rugby Club.

Although that work is being carried out by Cork County Council and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, he made the point that the same area was without water at the weekend.

Mr Ferguson went to the trouble of sending a list of the dates that his area was without water. In 2025, it includes: September 16th, September 17th, October 4th, October 7th, October 9th and Christmas Day, December 25th.

So far, in 2026, there have been outages on March 3rd, April 8th, May 4th, May 17th and May 18th. And, he said, this doesn't even come close to addressing the water quality issues, which have been 'consistently dismissed.'

The issue also came up for discussion at Monday's meeting of the Western Division of Cork County Council with Social Democrat Cllr Isobel Towse expressing her doubts about Uisce Éireann's commitment to the people of Shannonvale.

'There's no timeline and no commitment to funding,' she stated.

A different problem in Shannonvale was also discussed at the meeting. Cllr Towse and Cllr Daniel Sexton (Ind Ire) said its malfunctioning sewage treatment system is not only seeping onto the community's 'green amenity,' it is also flowing into the Argideen River, which supplies the drinking water for Clonakilty town.

Last September the Environment Protection Agency prosecuted Uisce Éireann. The water utility pleaded guilty to failing to operate the waste water works in accordance with best practice to ensure that discharges from the works did not cause environmental pollution.

Uisce Éireann also pleaded guilty to failing to notify the Environmental Protection Agency as soon as practicable after the occurrence of an incident, namely unauthorised discharge from the holding tank on September 20th 2024.

At that court, Judge Halpin convicted Uisce Éireann and imposed fines totalling €4,000.

On Monday, an engineer told member of the Western Division that it has been agreed that sewage is to be pumped from Shannonvale to Clonakilty, where there is a waste water treatment facility.

Locally, Alan Dromey welcomed the fact that there is to be engagement with local landowners to secure the land necessary so that pipes for the pumping of sewage to Clonakilty's wastewater treatment plant can be installed.