Thousands of people were left without water during the crisis The head of an independent review into Northern Ireland’s water services has said the team’s two reports were not acted on.
The review was set up by the assembly in 2007 after direct rule ministers advised that water services should be privatised.
Among its recommendations were that water charges should come in.
“We prepared the reports and they’re still sitting on somebody’s shelf somewhere,” Prof Paddy Hillyard said.
About 40,000 homes and businesses in Northern Ireland were cut off from the mains water supply during the Christmas period and the government-owned NI Water was severely criticised for its response to those in need.
Professor Hillyard said he “was very fearful it will happen again” because the water system “just cannot cope with heavy frost”.
On Thursday, it was announced that an investigation into the crisis had been widened.
The Executive has agreed to appoint two people to scrutinise the role of the Department of Regional Development, while the utility regulator will investigate NI Water’s performance.
Professor Hillyard said as the regulator has a role in approving or disapproving investment in the water infrastructure, the investigation was not independent.
Conor Murphy said measures were in place to avoid a repeat of the water crisis “To ask the regulator to carry out a review when he is in fact part of the government’s arrangements will mean that it won’t be totally independent
“What the people of Northern Ireland need is a totally independent review,” he said.
“What worries me is that with the (assembly) elections coming up these reports are going to yet again be sitting on somebody’s shelf gathering dust and nothing will de done until after the election.
“We have so little time to prepare for another possible crisis like this winter and we have to move very fast to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Assurances
Earlier, Northern Ireland’s regional development minister said he had been assured that measures are in place to ensure there is no repeat of the water crisis.
Conor Murphy said NI Water had told the Executive and his department about “the immediate lessons they have put in place”.
“We also received a report from the Civil Contingencies Group – who span across all departments in terms of a response to an emergency situation – to tell us what suggestions they had put in place to allow other agencies and government departments to assist NI Water should any issue like this arise again.
“So there were very firm reassurances given to the Executive and the regional development committee that there have been a lot of immediate lessons learned and measures put in place to ensure we don’t have a reoccurrence of this this winter,” Mr Murphy said.
On Thursday, the Executive agreed to a twin track review of the crisis after hours of talks.
Mr Murphy said the investigation had been widened “to ensure that there was some confidence that there is a proper investigation into all of this”.
A thaw following an unprecedented spell of cold weather led to thousands of burst pipes The Executive meeting came after senior officials from Northern Ireland Water were grilled by members of Stormont’s Regional Development Committee earlier on Thursday.
The chief executive of NI Water during the crisis, Laurence MacKenzie, was absent after he agreed to step down from his role in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The company’s director of customer services, Liam Mulholland, told the committee that it had received more than 1m contacts from the public over the Christmas period and that its systems had “simply been overwhelmed”.
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