IRISH WATER have been urged to alter the manner in which they communicate with businesses and homeowners on planned water outages after one Ennis hair salon was left unable to deal with customers in recent weeks.
Presently, Irish Water communicates with businesses about planned and unplanned outages only when they are signed up to receive notifications.
According to a spokesperson for Irish Water, “For customers to avail of this service their account has to be matched to a WPRN. We are looking at options to increase the amount of non-domestic customers who receive these notifications”. Business customers wishing to sign up to notifications can do so by contacting Irish Water’s business team on 0818-778-778 between 9am and 5:30pm from Monday to Friday.
Cllr Mark Nestor (FF) called on Clare County Council to press Irish Water to adapt a different approach to inform businesses and homeowners of planned approach. His proposal came in the wake of a number of businesses in the Ennis area raising the matter following a recent outage. “One business was a hair salon, I haven’t much experience of them but I understand when they have no running water they are out of business for the day,” he quipped.
Among the locations affected recently were the Quin Rd Business Park with Ash Hair Studio the salon impacted particularly.
Of the response from Irish Water, Cllr Nestor said it gave an impression that making contact “takes too much time” for the utility company. The Ennis representative requested a media campaign be undertaken “to encourage businesses to sign up to receive the notifications to avoid situations like this”. His call was supported by Cllr Ann Norton (IND) and Cllr Paul Murphy (FG).
