In Grangegorman, the source of a mysterious flow of water down the street has yet to be established

John Hannah says he first noticed a mysterious trickle of water on his street, Grangegorman Upper, four years ago.

He reported it to Dublin City Council and Uisce Éireann in 2022, and many times since, he says, to try to get someone to fix it. 

Still today, the water can be seen flowing down the street even on a dry day, says Hannah. 

“City council says it's not their problem, Irish Water says it's not their problem because the water is not coming from a leak on the road,” he says. 

Hannah wants to know how the issue hasn’t been fixed. 

The council came out and tarmaced the footpath more than two years ago but that was just a temporary fix. The water broke through again. 

He was surprised when they did that, he says. “Repairing the path over the leak, I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

Green Party Councillor Janet Horner, together with her colleague then-Green Party TD, Neasa Hourigan, has been inquiring about the issue since 2024. She is dissatisfied with the communication from Uisce Éireann, she says. 

This week, a spokesperson for Uisce Éireann said that it has carried out extensive investigations but has not yet found the source of the mysterious water flowing down the street on dry days. 

“Since the issue was first raised, extensive leak finding activities have been completed, and there have been multiple repairs completed in the general area,” says the spokesperson. “The area has again been swept for leakage with no new leak being detected.”

They carried out testing, too, he says. “In parallel, samples taken from the visible water this week have now been confirmed as NOT being drinking water or wastewater,” says the spokesperson, suggesting it is surface water or something else, he said.

Trying to get answers

In February 2024, then-Green Party TD Hourigan wrote to Uisce Éireann, saying that despite the area being newly tarmacked, the flow of water persisted on Grangegorman Upper. 

She said she understood that workers had attempted to investigate it but couldn’t do so because of cars parked there. She offered to help get residents to move cars if necessary. 

“Due to the complex nature of some of the queries raised, we may require input from various Uisce Éireann departments to obtain full aspects of response,” says the email back.  “As you can appreciate, this may extend our response times in certain scenarios.”

In April 2024, Hourigan got a response saying: “Reinstatement of opening was checked and is completed.”

In May 2025, Horner wrote to Uisce Éireann. “I receive regular, incredibly frustrated emails from residents in the area because they are being urged to conserve water, but have watched water leaking down the road constantly,” she wrote. 

She never got any information on what was happening, she says. She spent half an hour on the phone to Uisce Éireann recently but was none the wiser at the end of the call. 

“It’s concerning to me that they are willing to get back to journalists and not to public representatives with full explanations,” Horner says. 

And, nearby

Horner says she has a similar struggle to get a leak fixed at nearby Richmond Street North, where residents say the water is causing a hazard in icy weather when it freezes. 

A spokesperson for Uisce Éireann said it is investigating that one, and it’s complicated. “This work is ongoing,” he said. “We have made two trial openings to see if we can determine where the water is coming from, but both times, we were unsuccessful.”

There are five water mains under this road, which would need to be checked, says the spokesperson. 

“Unfortunately, there are street furniture items built over our assets, which further complicates matters,” says the spokesperson. 

“This is an extremely busy road, which would require a traffic management plan and a road opening licence from the relevant planning authority if further investigation works are required.”

Horner is not impressed with the answer. “The responses sound like a series of excuses,” she says. Street furniture shouldn't deter an investigation into the source of a leak. 

Uisce Éireann should communicate directly with residents and provide them with information too, she says. “I still remain very frustrated by the lack of capacity to communicate.”