Thursday, 23 Sep 2021
Mr. Niall Gleeson (Managing Director, Irish Water)
Following a meeting on Saturday, 18 September, with the Minister for Housing Local Government and Heritage and the chief executives of Wexford County Council and Dublin City Council, we have implemented the following immediate additional measures: we have prioritised a knowledge audit of the largest 20 water treatment plants in the country,
We will start with the top 20 and will do that within the next two weeks,
Deputy Joe Flaherty
Can we get a list of the 20 plants? Why is this audit not being completed across the entirety of the network?
Deputy Joe Flaherty
Can he circulate the details of the 20 plants that are being analysed?
Mr. Niall Gleeson
Certainly, yes, we can.
Ms Margaret Attridge (Asset Operations, Irish Water)
The EPA is doing a follow-up of audits on the top 20 sites in the same two-week period after Irish Water does its initial audits.
Deputy Cian O’Callaghan
Okay. Will the audits on the 20 plants that are being done now be published? If so, when?
Mr. Niall Gleeson
I see no reason why we would not publish them, although we had not planned to because they are internal Irish Water reports. …. We will not be hiding anything, that is for sure. These audits are knowledge audits so it is our assessment of the knowledge of the operators and their knowledge of the reporting procedures.
None of the 20 Irish Water audit reports have been published
Committee response as follows:
Following the non publication of the audit reports, I submitted an FOI for the reports (FOIR 1220A – RE: Irish Water appearance at Oireachtas Committee (Thursday, 23 Sep 2021) FOI Request)
Irish Water asked for a four week extension to consider the FOI, I refused. The ignored that, but their own extension date lapsed this week, so sent for Internal Review
In the meantime, in lieu of publishing the twenty audit reports, Irish Water have published an aggregated report of 26 (unclear why not 20 plants), and suggested that this publication is “publicly available, there is no need for an FOI request or internal review so they will close the request”
The publication of an aggregated report as a strategy to avoid publication of the actual audit reports is not a reasonable response, so sent for Internal Review, as I would be confident of getting this data via OIC on Appeal
Here is a copy of the aggregated report