Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)

This has been sitting around for the past 37 years and as a new Member, I fail to see how this has gone on for 37 years, how the people who were here before us and some who are still here, did not find time to sit down and work out how to sort out this problem, to achieve a consensus and to deal with it.

I refer to the commencement date for the application of the standards. I refer to people with small sites such as quarter-acre or half-acre sites and where percolation areas have been added outside of the site boundaries, with the permission of adjoining landowners. I ask that in these cases, the Minister will guarantee that people will not be forced to buy land to comply with whatever regulations are introduced. I know this is a difficult issue and there will need to be give and take with regard to it. Many people on small sites in areas with poor percolation have been forced to locate a percolation area beyond the boundary of their own site. I ask the Minister to address this because it is of great concern to people. They are worried that they may have to buy land from an adjoining landowner and in many cases they are on low incomes and do not have the wherewithal to purchase land.

The Minister is in the driving seat now. The previous Government did not do anything about increasing the grants for group sewerage schemes. The grant for group sewerage schemes is only €2,000 while the grant for the water schemes is €6,000, even though a far smaller pipe is involved. I wrote to the previous Government when I was a member of the county council but no action was taken to increase the grant for sewerage schemes beyond the level of the grant for water schemes. I ask the Minister to look at this issue because many of these problems could perhaps be solved by small group sewerage schemes on the outskirts of towns which would bring many of these ribbon development houses on the edges of settlement areas into the main sewerage system. The Minister knows what I mean because he was a county councillor. I ask for some commitment from the Minister to examine that issue which is very important and which will help to improve ground water around many of the towns and to encourage people away from septic tanks if they are living on the fringes of main settlement areas.

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