Third World ?

I was listening to a local radio phone in this morning here in the West of Ireland. They were discussing the problems with water supplies in rural areas. It was shocking to hear that in several areas there are dozens of houses with undrinkable water - they have to buy bottled water. Also there are other areas in County Mayo where the water is turned of for most of the day. There are no water rates payable in Ireland - the water supply is mainly controlled by local Councils with financial help from the government via taxpayers money. As someone said on the radio - if this was Ethiopia people would be sending aid to help - but Ireland is supposed to be oe of the richest countries in GDP terms in the world !! What is going wrong?