Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When the town I know best gets heavy rain, the solution is to open the sluice gates and let the sewage go. My town has been flooded five times in the past six years, involving isolated incidents of heavy downpours in summer and autumn. Sewage comes up onto the streets. It disappears within ten minutes because a council worker gets to the treatment plant and the sewage is let go straight into the River Suir. This happens regularly. Our town’s capacity is inadequate. I know three or four of the 35 towns well, and they face the same problem.

I support Deputy Collins’s point. Farmers are the only ones who have been penalised over water quality. I accept that nitrates and phosphorous are different pollution sources, but water quality will not improve while we have that level of raw sewage going into our streams and rivers.