Mr. David Flynn:

I thank the Acting Chairman and the committee members for the opportunity to present to them today. I am accompanied by Mr. Dara Lynott, deputy director general of the EPA, and Mr. Noel Byrne, senior manager in the wastewater enforcement area.

The EPA has been the regulator for wastewater treatment since October 2007. Initially, we supervised the 34 local authorities. Since Irish Water came in in 2014, we have been its environmental regulator for both wastewater and drinking water. On wastewater, we have assessed and licensed 1,047 sites and there are a further 21 currently at assessment stage. In our role as environmental regulator, we work closely with our colleagues in CER and we have a memorandum of understanding with CER in that regard.

I distributed some copies of the presentation to the members. Our role involves the monitoring and supervision of urban wastewater services, as I stated, for 1,000 villages, towns and cities. These are called agglomerations under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive.

Our regulatory system comes from the 1991 Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and the 2000 Water Framework Directive, so it has been in place for quite a while. The objectives include the appropriate treatment, such as second-level treatment for most wastewater treatment plants and more stringent treatment for environmentally sensitive areas. Generally, these are coastal estuarine areas that require higher levels of treatment.

Where the EPA detects significant non-compliance with the regulations or conditions on licences, it takes enforcement action in line with its policy. This can include court actions. We have taken 13 such cases since we became regulator.

On public reporting, we publish an annual report each year. In our most recent report published in the autumn of last year, we again called for appropriate capital investment in wastewater treatment. That is primarily the issue here, that sufficient money is made available. Very significant sustained funding is required to improve the wastewater systems if these pollution and health risks are to be avoided in the future. In 2015, the latest year for which we have a full set of reporting data, 142 large towns and cities complied with the EU's wastewater treatment standards, while 29 failed. The preliminary data we have for 2016 shows there is no significant improvement in this rate of compliance.

While new sewage treatment plants have been built in many areas, for example, at Ardmore, Dunmore East and Ballylongford, as the committee heard in the earlier presentation, raw sewage continues to be discharged from 45 different areas across the country. The planned delivery of treatment plants at half of these areas has now been delayed by more than two years.

In comparison to the European averages, our national treatment performance has improved a lot over the past decade and a half. However, we still perform poorly, when compared to other European countries in terms of the 26 year old directive which brought in strict deadlines for the upgrade of treatment, and these are now between 12 and 19 years behind these deadlines. The overall compliance with the basic standards was 51% in Ireland in 2015 while the EU average was 92%. As one can see, significant improvement is required. Most of this non-compliance is down to Dublin city's Ringsend treatment plant. There are plans to upgrade the plant and that would bring us nearer to the European average. For sensitive areas, it is worse again, with Ireland at 25%. In comparison, the EU average is 88%. One will see those figures on slide 6 in the pack.

In terms of the present ECJ case, there are 38 sites listed by the European Commission. Of these, the EPA considers that 27 agglomerations remain to be resolved. The other agglomerations have largely been addressed, either by the local authorities or by Irish Water since it has taken over. There is one further situation, which Mr. Grant mentioned, which is Gweedore. This is currently not regulated by the EPA. Our assessment of the case is that most of the outstanding 38 sites can be resolved by 2021, given the application of sufficient funding and resources across that period of time. Our latest information from Irish Water is that there will be three sites remaining beyond 2021, at Cork city, Thurles and Roscrea.

In terms of the EU list, however, I would highlight to the committee that there are wider problems beyond these 38 sites and the 27 that remain to be resolved. One will see on slide 8 that there are 100 further sites listed on the EPA's national priority list, that is, 127 sites overall that the EPA is prioritising. The list highlights significant issues to be addressed to avoid environmental risks, such as the raw sewage, which I mentioned, discharges near bathing water which the committee would have heard about this morning in the latest bathing water report, and areas threatening shellfish areas or pollution of rivers. The assessment of collection systems is also continuing and we anticipate a significant bit of work will arise out of that assessment, as we learn more about the networks and the impact of discharges from combined sewer overflows.

In short, the pace of resolving wastewater needs to improve. The EPA analysis has found that better operational practices could resolve approximately one fifth of the problems. However, it is simply the case that most of the existing infrastructure is not capable of meeting the standards required. In order to meet these standards, we need increased capital investment, improved efficiencies and the delivery of outstanding infrastructure needed to protect rivers, lakes and coastal waters. I thank the committee.