6 months waiting on Water Connection! Council advised me to dig up road myself???

Hi,
 
I opened a ticket with Irish Water on the 22nd of June this year to have a new water connection brought into the front of my Cork 1860's terraced house . Now 6 months on and having put in an application, paid my fee and dealt with Irish Water and the council several times I am still waiting for someone to come along and start the job. Since June I have had to call the Irish Water and the council nearly every week for updates (over 30 calls made by me) and all that happen are that my tickets gets lost by you, people promise to call back (they don't) and nothing gets resolved. Your system is an absolute shambles.  
 
Finally in November a staff member from the Cork Council Water Dept called out to the house only to tell my handyman that he or I would have to dig up the road and public footpath between ourselves to locate where the water pipe was. He said this was not in Cork Councils or Irish Water's remit and said he would only add the stopcock once I had dug up the footpath and found the pipe. No guidance could be given as to where the pipe might be. This is a public footpath in a town that has a large amount of local and tourist footfall. When I said there was no way I would be tearing up the footpath by myself nor would a contractor take it on as they would need a road permit before they could to do so he was still insistent that this had to be the case. Sine that conversation he or anyone from that dept has failed to call me back.

For obvious reasons it seems crazy that Cork Council would advise the public to dig up roads and footpaths when the customer A) Should not have to do in the first place and a fee was paid to the council to do the job B) Does not have the correct equipment to do the job C) Does not have a road permit or public liability insurance to dig up public paths D) Could leave the footpath is a perilous condition

At this stage I am left in limbo with only partial water supplies running through my house. Where am I supposed to go from here? Why take my money if you will not provide a service? How can you think its acceptable to let someone have to call over 30 times to try and get a basic job done. I had a new gas supply installed in less than 2 weeks on the same footpath...why do Irish Water take 6 months and counting? Why does your complaints page on water.ie say that if a person submits a complaint Irish Water can take 2 months to come to a decision on that complaint.....what customer can wait that long?
 
I really hope someone can finally provide a resolution to this ongoing scenario, It has gone on far too long and taken up huge amounts of my time. I trust it can be sorted. 


Thank you.