Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the officials for their time. It is always good to have an opportunity to talk to the EPA. I have been working with water issues for a long time now. It is a basic human right but unfortunately, as a very wealthy developed country, we do not seem to have got it right. Even though there are a lot of places where the water is good, there is a huge issue with the confidence people have in water, hence 1 million plastic bottles of water are bought every day because people do not have the confidence to drink their tap water. I would love to hear if we are going to do anything about that and promote the fact that water is safe to drink in many places. There is obviously miscommunication around that when the whole country is buying bottled water every day.

The third cycle of the EU water framework directive is due and local authorities must feed into that national strategy. I worry about the lack of staff and the lack of time local authority staff have to do all the things they are asked to do, on top of feeding into the framework directive and having it properly done. I think Clare County Council has only four staff working full-time. They have to do everything from dealing with pollution complaints to planning applications, farm inspections, forestry applications and inspections for the national inspection plan for domestic wastewater. They work on all those things and I do not see how it can all be done in a way the EPA can trust as being of the good quality we need if we are serious about having this proper plan to get things right. There is also the polluter pays principle but how can the polluter pay if we cannot find the polluter because we are understaffed and under-resourced? There were many sweeping statements about blaming certain sections of society, such as all farmers and random things like that, when we really need to hold it down to the specific polluters and ensure they are punished. However, if we are not resourcing authorities appropriately that will not be done and then we will just have division between people and in communities instead.

We also want to have rural and regional rebalancing in Ireland. Now more than ever people will be able to have opportunities to work remotely. In order to be able to do that we need more water infrastructure that is done well so we can have serviced sites in our villages and towns to bring life back into those places. I would love to know what work is being done on that or how the EPA feels about that being able to happen politically if we do not have the infrastructure being built in time. I could name three or four villages in my county where we smell sewage every day and it has been going on for 30 years. In 2021 that is not good enough anymore. The EPA is the regulatory body over Irish Water and the local authorities so I guess it is on the agency to see what we need to do, ask for it and get it because the other bodies I mentioned are under the agency, if the officials know what I mean. I would like to hear the officials' thoughts on that and on how we are going to move forward to become a place where people have trust and faith in water.