Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 23 September 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Water Quality and Infrastructure and Small Town and Villages Growth Programme: Discussion

Ms Margaret Attridge:

I have a very quick answer to that one. Yes, the EPA is doing a follow-up of audits on the top 20 sites in the same two-week period after Irish Water does its initial audits. There is very close scrutiny by both the EPA and Irish Water.

I will return to Deputy Flaherty's question earlier. As Mr. Gleeson said, our initial focus is on the top 20 sites. We want to get an initial audit done of all those treatment plants by 1 October. With the resources, we are limited to getting to the top 20. That will cover 60% of all customers. With the remaining 700-plus treatment plants, our plan is to roll out the refresher training to all local authority management. The request there is for the local authority management to cascade that training down to all the plant operators on the remaining sites. We will then, over time, get to all those remaining sites and carry out an audit of the remaining treatment plants, but that is going to take some time.