Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I support the motion proposed by Senators Whelan and Landy. I would like to include Shannon in this because in that area we have had experience of dealing with the EPA and Enva.

In 2002, the seed bed for the waste water at the Schwarz Pharma plant in Shannon was not working. It took between a year and half and two years to convince the EPA that this was the problem. The company repeatedly denied it. After it was proven in court, the company was fined €200,000 by a judge, while still denying it was the cause of the problem. During that whole period, the EPA was a disaster in my opinion. I do not think anything has changed since then.

Last year, I attended a meeting at which the horrendous smell that caused a serious problem in Shannon for the last couple of years was discussed. The smell was coming from the treatment plant, but I have always asked what was going into the treatment plant to cause the problem. There are 350 inadequate treatment plants around the country, but they do not all cause such a smell. We received figures from Enva in Shannon last year. These figures are on the public record. In 2005, Enva dumped 10,000 liquid tonnes of leachate, which is the run-off from Gortadroma dump and a dump in south Galway, into the Shannon treatment system. That figure was 6,000 tonnes in 2008, but by 2012 it had increased to 25,000 tonnes. The figure was 17,000 tonnes last year. The EPA will try to tell us the leachate is not the cause of the problem because it is treated in the plant. The problem with this kind of self-monitoring system is that when one calls to give two weeks' notice of one's intention to call out, one can be sure the boys will have the figures well doctored by the time one gets there. I absolutely believe the dumping of this leachate into the treatment plant in Shannon was the cause of our smell. I have no doubt in the wide earthly world that this is the case. I have asked Irish Water to investigate the matter. The problem is that this thick black liquid substance - one can imagine the run-off from a septic tank or a silage pit - stays in the system.

I attended a meeting last year at the invitation of the local town council. An EPA official, Mr. Peter Cunningham, was in attendance. I do not mind putting his name on the record because he wrote this letter. One of the three council officials in attendance was the council chemist, who is a super lady. This top-class woman has tried her best over the years to break down the walls of the EPA and many other groups. During the course of the meeting, approximately ten minutes into the presentation, I asked a simple question. I wanted to know whether the council officials were happy that the EPA was telling us the truth. There are two answers one could give in response to that question - "Yes" or "No". There was stunned silence before the council official, in fairness to her, said "No, I am not happy that we are being told the truth". Therein lies the problem.

There is literally no contact with the local authority in any of the regions unless the EPA is dragged pulling and screaming into making contact. The same EPA that licensed the Shannon treatment plant in 2006, and said it could not take any more effluent, subsequently licensed Enva to dump extra material into the system. In fact, some 200,000 tonnes have gone into the system since that time. I acknowledge that the Minister, Deputy Hogan, gave us €4 million for the upgrade of the Shannon treatment plant. While I thank him for that money, he might as well throw it out into the car park as long as those boys are putting that volume of stuff into the system because it cannot work in such circumstances. Other towns around the country that have treatment plants which take in the normal domestic effluent - some of them have industrial stuff going in as well - do not smell like the town of Shannon smelled when it was reeking for months on end. The problem was particularly bad in the summer, when the stuff in the system heated up. The smell traversed the whole town because the Smithstown industrial estate is on the north side of the town and the treatment plant is 5 km away on the south side of the town.

The EPA says it trusts the companies that are self-monitoring, but I do not trust them at all. Having seen the EPA in action, I know what it has done. It constantly uses phrases like "we did it right" and "we got it right" as a defence. When I asked EPA officials whether it is possible that the leachate could be contributing to the smell, they said it could be but they could not say for definite. Surely the tonnage of stuff that is going through a normal treatment system - this is not happening in any other town - must be contributing to the smell. While I missed the earlier part of the debate, unfortunately, I would agree with everything Senator Whelan has said. I am asking for an independent investigation into the leachate that is going out of Enva and into the Shannon treatment system. I have put Irish Water, which trusts the figures it is given by the EPA, on notice that this needs to be investigated properly before a new treatment plant is built and this is allowed to continue.

The local authority officials need to have actual teeth with the EPA. When there is an issue, council officials should be able to go in and investigate these sites at short notice. This should be done jointly with the EPA so that the agency cannot take the "I'm all right Jack" attitude all the time. The EPA often says "you could not be right, you are just county council officials, what would you know?". Four years ago, some 300 m of the pipe network was wiped out when nitric acid was put into the system. This is the kind of dodgy stuff that is going on. There is a lot of stuff on these sites. I would say we have had six or seven issues with two companies in Shannon, Enva and Chemifloc. There was an explosion two years ago. This goes far beyond this great agency, which is very arrogant when it is questioned. Its officials do not like having to answer questions. Senator Whelan found that out directly when he asked certain questions. I would like investigations to be carried out in Portlaoise and Shannon. The common denominators here are Enva and the EPA. The same company and the same agency are involved. Nobody is going to tell me there is no problem. I am living in the problem.