A Carlow business is facing a bill of half a million euro from Irish water as it tries to get a new building off the ground.
Walsh Whiskey is building a new distillery at Royal Oak where they hope to create 55 new jobs for the locality.
The company was granted a license from Carlow county council in 2013 to allow the water by-product from the distilling process to be sent to the Bagenalstown water plant for processing.
Now its Irish Water who are responsible and they want Walsh Whiskey to come up with the 500 thousand euro needed to upgrade the plant in Bagenalstown
Chief executive Bernard Walsh told KCLR Live they have no problem paying the standard charges but he says it’s unfair to expect them to fork out for new infrastructure.
In a statement to KCLR Irish Water says that since Jan 1st 2014, an applicant for development is required to apply separately to Irish Water for a connection for water or sewerage services.
It says where such an application gives rise to a requirement for
additional infrastructure, required solely to service the applicants
development, then Irish Water is required to secure an agreement to recover the
costs for the provision of the necessary infrastructure.
