Dr. Tom Ryan:

I thank the committee for inviting the EPA to assist in its deliberations on this matter of water quality and water supply. I am Dr. Tom Ryan, director of environmental enforcement with EPA. I am joined by EPA senior management colleagues Mr. Noel Byrne, Ms Mary Gurrie and Dr. Michelle Minihan, all of whom have various responsibilities for water quality issues within the remit of the EPA, which is very broad. It includes acting as the drinking water quality regulator for public water supplies; enforcing wastewater authorisations; co-ordinating and implementing the national monitoring programme to assess and report on water quality; and assessing the impact of human activities and pressures on the status of water bodies. In this context, the EPA publishes a series of reports annually including the drinking water quality in public supplies report; the urban wastewater treatment report; and the water quality in Ireland report, all of which are due for publication over the next few weeks.

The last time EPA was invited to address this committee was in October 2021 in the aftermath of two very serious incidents at drinking water treatment plants in Ballymore Eustace and Gorey towards the end of summer 2021. At that time, EPA highlighted our concerns that the existing arrangements for the delivery of safe drinking water in terms of managerial oversight, operational control and responsiveness were not working satisfactorily and were posing an unacceptable risk to public health by failing to ensure safe and secure drinking water. I will take the opportunity of this opening statement to update the committee on the current status of drinking water quality, with some remarks about water quality generally in Ireland.

Our drinking water is sourced from our rivers, lakes, springs and groundwater and must be treated to make it clean and safe to drink before it is supplied to people. To that end, the EPA is the drinking water quality regulator, which is responsible for enforcing the drinking water regulations. Irish Water is responsible for providing the public water services and ensuring that drinking water quality meets the standard in the regulations and that it is "clean and wholesome" for consumption. Irish Water has responsibility under the regulations for approximately 800 drinking water treatment plants in Ireland, for the most part operated by local authorities under a service level agreement for Irish Water.

The EPA enforces the drinking water quality regulations through an annual programme of audits, assessments and through promotion of our remedial action list, known as the "RAL". The RAL is a dynamic list of public water supplies that EPA has identified as priorities for significant action and investment by Irish Water to improve plant performance and resilience in supplying drinking water. A supply may be placed on the RAL if it cannot provide drinking water that is free from certain microbiological or chemical substances, or if the treatment plant is not operated effectively and correctly. It is important to emphasise that compliance with the microbiological and chemical standards for drinking water supplies remains high, at greater than 99.7%, which means that the water in our public water supplies is safe to drink. In addition, Irish Water had reduced the number of people served by RAL supplies from just over 1 million to approximately 370,000 at the end of 2021, which was a positive and very welcome development.

Some key achievements by Irish Water in 2021 included the commissioning of a new plant at Vartry, serving approximately 127,000 people, and an upgrade of Leixlip, serving approximately 590,000 people. Those supplies were subsequently removed from the RAL. However, issues at a number of other of other treatment plants in the first half of this year have reversed some of these positive gains. The number of people currently served by supplies on the RAL stands at approximately 560,000 consumers. This reversal underscores the challenge that, while water quality remains high, drinking water treatment in many supplies is still not as resilient as it needs to be to ensure the supply is safe into the future.

The EPA’s 2021 drinking water quality report, which will be published later this week, sets out in detail the main issues affecting the quality of the drinking water supplied by Irish Water that require action, including ensuring adequate disinfection; reducing the levels of trihalomethanes, THMs; addressing poor treatment control processes; and the need to replace lead water mains and household pipes.

I will highlight two issues for the purpose of this opening statement. The first is persistent THM failures. The number of people affected by THM failures has increased in 2022 by over 133,000 people due to five supplies being added to the RAL. This erodes the progress that was made in 2021, particularly following the commissioning of the new water treatment plant at Vartry. It should also be noted that the European Commission is progressing infringement proceedings against Ireland for failure to address THM compliance.

The second issue I would like to highlight is poor treatment control processes. At the end of 2021, 24 supplies were on the RAL for poor treatment control processes. While it is an essential step to have all required infrastructure in place, a water treatment plant must also be managed and operated correctly and be able to adapt and respond to changing conditions and to incidents, in particular. Essential alarms, monitors and staff training are critical prerequisites for a well-run drinking water treatment plant.

An inadequate response to plant alarms was a significant contributor to the incidents in the Gorey and Ballymore Eustace plants, which in the case of Gorey resulted in illness and hospitalisations in 2021.

I will turn briefly to the issue of boil-water notices, or water restrictions, that Irish Water imposes from time to time in consultation with our colleagues in the HSE. While boil water notices are a cause of inconvenience to people, they are necessary to ensure that members of the public do not consume water that could be contaminated and make them ill. Boil-water notices increased significantly in 2021 and affected far more people than in 2020. More than 211,000 people were affected in 2021 compared to fewer than 75,000 in 2020. However, this increase is attributed to improved vigilance by Irish Water and staff training after the Gorey and Ballymore Eustace incidents. The primary cause of the need to impose such restrictions is a failure in the disinfection or pathogen-removal processes. Assessments and improvements under Irish Water's national disinfection programme are continuing but clearly have not yet proved sufficiently robust to mitigate the need for boil-water notices.

I will move on to the drinking water legislative framework. It should be noted that the framework will undergo a significant amendment with the transposition of the new drinking water directive which is due before January 2023. The EPA continues to work with the Department and other stakeholders in support of that process. The transposition will bring new and more challenging drinking-water-standard requirements and will also provide an opportunity to address some gaps identified by the EPA in the enforcement regulatory framework.

I will finish with a few brief remarks about the general water quality in Ireland. In short, water quality in Ireland is not as good as it should be. Our rivers, lakes, estuaries and groundwaters continue to be under pressure from human activities such as agriculture, forestry, wastewater discharges and physical changes like land drainage. Slightly more than half of surface waters are in a satisfactory condition, which means that a large number are not in good ecological health. These are unable to sustain healthy ecosystems and are failing to meet the legally binding water-quality objectives set by the EU water framework directive because of pollution and other human disturbance. Urgent action is essential to drive and sustain improvements while preventing further deterioration through the implementation of the next river-based management plan.

I assure the committee that the EPA will continue to monitor and report on water quality issues, provide regulatory oversight of Irish Water and work closely with the HSE and the Department with the primary objective of ensuring the protection of human health and the environment.