James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for his questions. I fully agree with him that we have to get developer-led wastewater treatment. As someone who comes from rural Ireland, I know that houses cannot be built in many villages to allow people to live in their local communities where their families are, where they went to school and where their support networks are. They are moving to the nearest provincial towns, many of which have artificial caps in terms of population growth. I am trying to address all of those issues. It is in the programme for Government that funding will be provided to Uisce Éireann to support the delivery of rural water schemes. Uisce Éireann will not be able to deliver them all in the near future. Even if it had the funding, it would not have the capacity. We need to have developer-led wastewater treatment plants with accreditation and oversight by Uisce Éireann, at a quality that it can take over. Nobody is proposing that we go back to the mistakes of the past. At the same time, we cannot keep fighting the past wars either. Having developers being able to deliver accredited high-quality systems is an important way for us to get homes back into our villages in particular.