The waiting times for the Cork County Council water line were heavily criticised at a recent Northern Area Committee meeting, as it emerged that callers could be waiting up to half an hour to lodge a complaint about their water services.

Cllr Ronan Sheehan said that while they are being told that the system is working, it is clear from these waiting times that it is not working as well as it should be.

Cllr Noel O’Connor added that during the frost and ice, it was easy to understand if the line was busy, but he said that when he rang at 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon, he was left waiting and Cllr Noel McCarthy added that recently, he was kept waiting three quarters of an hour.

With the centralisation approach of all calls going through a call centre, the point of local contact is gone, in that the person taking the complaint is more than likely not familiar with the particular geography of the caller’s area.

Katherine Walshe, Director of Services for Water, pointed out that all calls go through the contact centre first and in January, 5,200 calls in relation to water were answered.

During the week, Monday to Friday from 9am until 5pm calls go through to 021 4285353 and out of office hours, they go through 1850 211839, and she emphasised that there is someone there to take a call at any time.

She added that each call would have an average talk time of two minutes and she said that with the first two months of the year, there were a high volume of calls in relation to driving licences, and this impacted on the contact centre therefore causing delays for other areas.

Other issues that arose in relation to water problems being fixed was that Cllr Noel O’Connor said that signs could be put up to make people aware that the council are working to fix an issue and that this could help to enhance a positive image for the council.

Cllr Kevin O’Keeffe queried the amount of work that has to be done before council workers can start working on something, arguing that they could be filling in paperwork for two hours before they start working on the actual  problem.

However, manager Moira Murrell said that health and safety is as much a part of the job as the job itself and she said that the message needs to get out there that health and safety is not an extension to a job, but instead is part of it.