The bad news came on February 24th, 1999. A letter from Dublin Corporation (water division) informed me that work would commence on renewing the water main in the quiet cul-de-sac which I inhabit in Dublin 4.
"Traffic movements and car parking may be restricted at certain times during the course of the work," the letter warned. This proved to be a spectacular understatement.
First to arrive was a vast Portakabin, on a scale to make the National Conference Centre superfluous. The Corpo was plainly settling in for a long stay. Here the workers would brew tea in between tearing up our road. I understand that new water pipes cannot be laid without a certain degree of disruption, but the Corpo men took to their task with the enthusiasm NATO showed in bombing Serbia.
High-speed JCB
They had a JCB driver who fancied he was in Mondello. Fangio arrived about nine every morning. He raced up and down with brio, shattering Marian Finucane's listenership figures. Noise competition was enhanced with the arrival of the jackhammer and the kango-hammer. A large truck would park outside my cottage, blocking out all light from the front.
The letter from the Corporation said the service pipe supplying me with water would also be renewed up to a point nine inches (225 mm) outside my boundary, "which is where the service pipe ceases to be the responsibility of Dublin Corporation and becomes the property of the householder."
If I wished, the letter went on, the Corporation would facilitate me by extending the new service up to and underneath the boundary free of charge subject to two conditions, one of which was that I employ my own plumber/contractor to connect up the piping inside the boundary and excavate the hole under the boundary wall. "The Corporation does not have a list of recommended plumbers," the letter added.
Naively perhaps, I took the expression "if I wished" to mean that I had a choice. Since my tap water was of excellent quality, I could see no reason why the waterworks were necessary in the first place, but in this respect the Corpo was not giving me a choice. However, further change I was prepared to resist and I did not engage the services of a plumber.
I got plumbed anyway. The man from the Corpo proudly showed me the pipe he had ripped out, which looked as though it had come from an elderly lead mine. Still, the water had tasted fine. Maybe leaded water is good for us. Too late now. I have spanking new pipes and water that tastes less good.
10 weeks
The Corpo spent 10 weeks in my cul-de-sac, which stretches for all of 200 yards. Should it ever contemplate renewing the water pipes in O'Connell Street, investors should sell their shares in the Gresham Hotel and people should remove any 1916 memorabilia they cherish from the General Post Office. It left the road in a condition that suggested that Cavan had come to Dublin 4, with smooth surfaces replaced by tarmacadammed gullies.
The local elections happened along and our public representatives got an earful from the residents. Or, to be precise, those candidates who bothered to canvass our little road did. I saw no sign whatever of Fine Gael. The Progressive Democrats dropped in leaflets but did not knock on doors. The most involved local representative is Fianna Fail's Eoin Ryan for whose party - breaking the habit of a lifetime - I shall vote next time out.
Ryan wrote to the Corpo, telling it that his constituents in this part of Dublin 4 were none too impressed with its performance. Nobody objected to the replacement of ancient water mains, but everybody objected to the infrastructure of our small road being JCB'd without any apparent intention of restoring it.
Another budget
The letter from the Corpo to Ryan is possibly the most astonishing aspect of the entire episode. An official told him that, by chance, some money from another budget had been freed up and, therefore, it would be possible to repair our road. In other words, the Corpo had been prepared to leave a road unrepaired indefinitely and it was only by a fluke that it was able to undo the JCB's damage.
Even then, the Corpo said, the repairs would be carried out only if there were no technical objections raised by public utilities such as Telecom Eireann.
Where Telecom got the power to decide whether road repairs should be carried out or not is a mystery lost, no doubt, in the incestuous history of the State-sponsored sector.
At the time of writing, no repairs have been carried out and there have been no sightings of a Great White Spotted Corpo Engineer. I wonder, though, where that JCB driver who thought he was Fangio is now.