Ms Sinéad O'Brien:

Yes. It is Irish Water but I am going to put it back on the Department. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is the competent authority, ultimately, for wastewater. It is answerable to the European Commission in terms of compliance with the urban wastewater treatment directive. In fact, we have an infringement case open against us and it is to the Department that the infringement unit will be calling. In fact, it is not Irish Water so much as the Department that is the drafter of the river basin management plan.

We are asking that for the 208 water bodies that are polluted by sewage, where sewage is the main source of pollution and not an agricultural source, for example, measures need to be put in place to address that. So, what does that mean? That means for wastewater treatment plants or systems, whether the sewer overflow or plant discharge is causing that pollution, there needs to be work to fix that in Irish Water's capital investment programme. The capital investment programme is going to run to 2029 and the deadline is 2027. Therefore, we can see already there is a mismatch there.

When we start to actually look at the figures, however, that is the least of our problems. Of those 208 water bodies for which we are saying urgent measures to remediate are needed, if we look at the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, urban wastewater treatment report, it does something SWAN does not agree with. The EPA said it will take a long time so it will prioritise the most significant ones. It has identified the 42 top areas that are polluted by sewage. Then, it looked to see what Irish Water's performance has been. Members will see in its report that of those 42 areas, only 15 of those - it maybe 13; I will have to check my figures - have measures in place. Irish Water has measures in place not even to fix them by 2024 but to have development or infrastructure beginning by 2024. We have, therefore, gone from 208 water bodies to 42 priority areas identified by the EPA to 15 areas for which Irish Water has a plan to remediate.

As Dr. Crowe and the Chairman himself said earlier, this should be a straightforward enough issue to address. It falls within the remit of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage so there are no conflicting sectors. I am not saying this is straightforward. There are numerous reasons this is not happening, first and foremost of which is obviously investment. I am sure Irish Water would also have other reasons. We are saying that in the interests of transparency, what the river basin management plan should do, which it does not, is identify all the water bodies of those 208 that are polluted by sewage, then name the systems and plants that are causing that pollution. It should then identify the ones for which there is a plan to fix and by what time and the ones for which there is no plan to fix and give a clear explanation as to why there is not one. That could be down to investment, planning or something to do with markets and consultants not being available or whatever it is. It should then conduct a gap analysis. Members of the committee and the public can then have a look at that to see what the State's plan is and whether we find that satisfactory. That for us is the first step. Ultimately, however, we are calling for measures to address all those issues, at least by the end the capital investment programme if not by the water framework objective of 2027.