Published: Wednesday, 3rd February, 2010 3:13pm

'Wrong people are behind bars' says Councillor

A Mullingar councillor has suggested that the full weight of justice be brought to bear on "chancers" who masqueraded as builders during the boom times.

Labour's Pat Collins expressed anger at last week's meeting of Mullingar Town Council that during the recent cold snap, people laid the blame for burst pipes in Mullingar housing estates at the door of local authorities.

Meanwhile builders who laid the pipes in new estates had "gone into hiding".

"When you studied the water situation closely, you'd see that most of the older estates in town didn't have the severe difficulties experienced by newer estates," he said.

"These new estates were built in the past eight to ten years, during which time you had a lot of fellas who couldn't stand straight one day, and were builders the next."

Cllr. Collins' comments came in response to a motion tabled by Fianna Fáil's Cllr. Ken Glynn, who asked the Council to ensure that before estates are taken in charge, proper drainage be installed, and water pipes laid at the correct depth. He said that while he realised the Council cannot "check every pipe and road", there could be "huge cost implications" if an estate is taken in charge.

An angry Cllr. Collins said that while once upon a time only registered builders could work on building large housing estates, the boom times led to the rise of "chancers".

"Over the last few weeks it came back to haunt us," he said. "The wrong people are in jail. Talk about bankers; we should let some of the crowd in Cloverhill out and put these lads [the builders] in."

He said that people with "huge mortgages" were now shouldering the consequences of bad workmanship, while builders "went into hiding".

Cllr. Mick Dollard described the recent water crisis as a "wake-up call", saying a lot of people "can't accept that the responsibility for frozen pipes lies with anyone other than the local authority".

He agreed with Cllr. Collins about older estates and that because pipes were laid two feet underground in these areas, they did not experience as many problems.