John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

The task force has approximately two months to produce a set of proposals. It will comprise officials from my Department, the local authorities and the EPA. We must then go through a legislative process. Due to the pressure on us, rightly, because of the severity of the problem, I hope the legislation will be passed within a year. It is absolutely essential. According to the CSO, there are approximately 418,000 septic tanks. I believe that is a conservative estimate because it does not take into account many of the commercial premises and so forth that rely on septic tanks. Many of the septic tanks in place should never have been approved, as the soil conditions were completely wrong. There was a degree of irresponsibility on the part of planners at local authority level. The numbers involved are incredible but we must take this problem in hand. We must have a situation where there is no threat to our groundwater from badly functioning septic tanks.

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