During an audit, the EPA inspector may look at some or all aspects of a supply including protection of the water source; treatment capacity; treatment process; storage; and distribution network.
The EPA issues audit reports to Irish Water following each audit, setting out its recommendations, and then publishes the reports on the EPA website.
A failure to address audit recommendations means that plants will ultimately fail to operate properly or effectively and may require a boil water notice or water restriction to be imposed.
Audit recommendations must be addressed in a timely manner before a serious failure at a plant results in consumers having to boil their water or restrict their use.
They are a mixture of scheduled (planned) audits, campaign audits and reactive audits.
The EPA also carry out audits of Irish Water’s monitoring programmes.
Scheduled audits are mainly used to check that remedial actions have been carried out, or as spot checks on supplies that have not had any water quality failures.
A campaign audit is where an audit is carried out for a particular reason. eg to check for progress on works being carried out at supplies on the EPA’s Remedial Action List.
Reactive audits are carried out to follow up on water quality failures or incidents notified to the EPA.
In cases where a boil water notice or water restriction is in place, the EPA may invite the Health Service Executive to attend a reactive audit to see why the treatment process or infrastructure failed to operate and what technical recommendations are to be met in order to ensure Irish Water can return a safe and secure supply of drinking water to the affected consumers.
Audit Reports Search by County