Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)

At a time when people can least afford it, they are already overly regulated. A farmer in the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme, REPS, has all types of inspections and on top of everything else, he will have a person coming around the back of the house to peer into the septic tank and inspect the ground around it. At the same time, people are being misinformed by the Government. They are not being given information about what an inspector will look for; the Minister has only said that the tank must be working.

We were misled in the Dáil some two weeks ago by a Minister, Deputy Quinn. He told us that from early February, there would be a fine of €26,000 or €27,000 per day, which is the reason the Government was to rush this legislation. Apparently, there was no choice as the taxpayer could not be exposed to this fine. I compliment Deputy Ó Cuív and others working with him who discovered afterwards that the Minister misled the Dáil. The following day Deputy Ó Cuív showed us how the Commission had indicated that we would not have to possibly - not even definitely - pay a fine until the summer months. There would have been plenty of time to debate this matter further and for the Minister to give out the proper information, letting the people know exactly what standard would be applied.

This will have an implication for people living in rural locations. A person who built a house in 1970 would have applied to the local authority and got planning permission, which would have contained rules and guidelines that would have been strictly adhered to with regard to the treatment of waste water. Some 39 years later there are the new Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, guidelines, which are far removed from what was required in the past. Will we tell those people who put in legal systems many years ago - complete with planning permission - that the system could be wrong and must be ungraded to meet the 2009 standards from the EPA guidelines? We do not have the required information so we do not know what guidelines are involved. We know the people, in good faith, did what was required of them by the local authority which granted permission. It is extremely unfair to tell those people that they must upgrade to meet today's guidelines.

From the start, the Minister has handled the issue very poorly.

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