Mr. Eamon Lonergan:

I can answer that query. The Department will have been aware of this issue for a number of years. The establishment of this expert panel and the multi-annual programme shows there is a good knowledge of the problem throughout the county. The surveys were carried out going back as far as 2015 to establish the scale of this and, as Mr. McGrath has explained, there are 834 of these estates across the country. The estimated expenditure will go into hundreds of millions to resolve these. It is very much on the national agenda and both the Department and Irish Water are very well aware of it. Ultimately, where we are going to see the resolution of this, because it is a legacy issue like other legacy issues, is in the discussions that are happening now at a national level between all the stakeholders forming part of this discussion and the solution ultimately for the national problem. Those legacy issues have been identified and DPIs form part of those legacy issues. That is the national context. The Department is very well aware of it. The fact it is putting forward a multi-year funding programme shows that.

In this local incident, we applied for funding back in 2019 and we recognise there is a solution here. We need to get the stakeholders to the table, and they have come to the table, they have come on side and they have inspected and done technical checks on the estate. They have recognised that we want to push this and they recognise there is a solution. That is the positive thing since as far back as June this year, and that is in the opening statement. Those technical inspections have taken place in the interim. We believe the proposal Mr. McGrath and Tipperary County Council are putting forward is a realistic one, and with Irish Water on board, which it is because it is doing the technical inspections and the Department is giving authorisation for us to look at that, all parties are now moving on this Rocksprings estate as quickly as we can. We are not waiting for this national resolution. We see this as a priority estate. We have ranked it highly in our application for funding and we are looking at a solution with the Department and Irish Water. That is our commitment and Mr. McGrath has outlined that in his opening statement.