Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Senator. I will come in on this, if I may. An application for planning was made in 2003 and here we are in 2022, coming into 2023, 20 years later and the DPI issue is still not resolved. I hear what Mr McGrath is saying about 800-odd other DPIs throughout the country and 25 within Tipperary. It is quite scary that this issue has taken the time, not to mention the cost of coming here, it has to try to be resolved. I am conscious Mr. Coskeran is in the Gallery, and I was not able to interact with him when he was a witness before this committee, but I really shudder to think why this is happening. It is bureaucracy gone mad if it is taking 20 years. I do not lay the blame fully at Tipperary County Council's door, but from 2003 up to 2014, with the establishment of Irish Water, that was a period when the issue was with Tipperary County Council. Following on from that, there was the establishment of Irish Water. I note what has been said, that there is a report being done and that the council applied for funding in 2019, three years ago. I am not sure when the report is to be done. Mr. McGrath might be able to clarify that with the Department. Surely, however, he as chief executive has to agree with me that this is not acceptable and that this has taken an inordinate amount of time. I am conscious that the five houses in Rocksprings we are speaking about are on the hook for the cost of resolution of any issue with infrastructure that would arise in the short to medium term. That is an extreme worry for people. Like Deputy Buckley and Senator Murphy and others, I would regularly deal with requests for taking in charge but rarely have I seen the buck being passed from one organisation to the next and everybody saying it is someone's fault or someone else's issue or we are waiting on this report or that investigation and this site meeting. I would be inclined to have a follow-up meeting within a month with the witnesses present from Tipperary County Council, with the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, with Irish Water and with the Department.

This is not just about one DPI; it is about a plethora of them and the process relating to them, which is clearly failing.

Mr. McGrath listed Rocksprings as No. 4 on the list of priorities for the county. That is to be welcomed, but I shudder to think about what will happen to the priorities from No. 5 all the way through to No. 25 if this is the pace at which these matters are going to be resolved. They cannot all come before the Oireachtas for negotiation. I hope that a streamlined process can be put in place between Irish Water and all of the local authorities to which the 800-odd DPIs relate. Mr. McGrath might come back to me in terms of the timeframe for the deliberation on this report. Ultimately, what kind of timeframe does he envisage in the context of finding a resolution to this issue after 20 years.