Busy Mayo hospital facing water outage threat

A SIGNIFICANT health and safety risk at Mayo University Hospital has been cited by the new Health Minister, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill.

The Dublin-based TD, who visited the busy Castlebar facility on February 4 last, is concerned by the threat of a major water shortage at the facility.

This is because Uisce Éireann does not have generators operating locally when the supply is hit by a major outage.

The anxiety is shared by big industrialists operating in the locality.

The hospital made a significant investment in its generators in 2023. That gave the staff real confidence its operations would not be impacted during recent storms.

Said the minister: "It is of the most basic importance. A key difficulty during Storm Éowyn was that Uisce Éireann did not have generators, leading to the threat of a water shortage to a hospital.

"While it did not happen, I am highlighting it as a risk that has to be fixed for the future. We need to acknowledge that while something bad did not happen, it could have happened and we have to fix that for the future."

Mayo TD Paul Lawless said generators in water treatment plants must become a mandatory part of Uisce Éireann's machinery.