Madam, – While the recent cold “snap” could hardly be described a crisis, it did reduce water supplies to critical levels and we all have to reduce consumption to allow reservoirs to fill. That means planning our daily activities to work around the available supply. To do that we need to know when we will and will not have supplies; uncertainty leads to stockpiling – filling baths, etc. If those responsible for supplies want us to reduce consumption they must communicate effectively and enable us to plan.
Regrettably, they are not very good at that. Take Fingal County Council for example. Howth hill has had severely restricted supplies since the problem began. However, last Friday there was no water. There was none on Saturday either and by 8pm, with tanks depleted, I visited the council’s web site to seek an update. The only reference to Howth was a message posted at 5pm Friday, the previous day. It said that supplies would be either reduced or non-existent on that day. Obviously, following this posting, they all went home for the weekend with the crisis parked until Monday.
But I still needed information, so I looked up our local councillors online and phoned one of them at approximately 8.30pm. To his credit he listened to me and undertook to investigate the situation. He came back about an hour later to say he had failed to make contact with anyone who could give him information.
While floods and frost have wrought havoc with the country recently, there must be a “big one”, a real disaster, to come. When it does, local authorities and other public bodies are not the people to lead; they are culturally incapable of doing so. If we are to survive we will have to put in place a system whereby proven leaders from the private sector, trained in crisis management and with statutory authority to direct the public sector can be called up to direct the response – otherwise we’re in big trouble.
As I write it is 8pm on Sunday and we’re still surviving on last Friday’s “update”. – Yours, etc,