Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

The purpose of my question is an effort to untangle the Minister's motivation when dealing with this issue. This is proposed to be a measure for dealing with pollution but the key part of a wastewater treatment system is the secondary treatment area which in this case is the percolation area. The Minister's Department has stated that many septic tanks in Ireland do not have an appropriate percolation area and that many areas are not suitable for percolation. Instead of addressing those measures as a pollution issue, the Minister has come up with a bogus scheme to try to get people to sort out this problem for themselves. It is ludicrous. For example, an area such as Gweedore in County Donegal has about 3,000 houses and the Minister is suggesting that individual householders should sort out this issue and pay for it themselves. Those people have been promised a proper treatment plant for decades which would deal with the problems of effluent and pollution. That is the reason I am asking this question. The standards, which the Minister is a little coy about, would reveal that he is not really dealing with the pollution issue at all.

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