Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Is the Minister telling me that if Wexford local authority wants more staff to work in this area, the State will cover the cost? I believe the local authority would inspect more septic tanks if it had them. Let me outline a big problem with the evidence-based system. Many tanks built in the early years — I built many of them — were built according to the planning conditions laid down and agreed by the local authority but they are not right. We have built many of the tanks incorrectly but we did not know at the time.

In the past few years, the raised-bed idea was introduced. The idea behind this was that one would import soil that could actually take the bacteria out of the water before it reached the water table. However, one needs good quality topsoil to take the bacteria out of the water. Good topsoil was very expensive and importing it was even more expensive. Transport is even more expensive than the soil itself. This meant people did not import the soil and instead created a raised bed with the soil already in the land. Was that cheating? It was, but the practice was prevalent. I know for a fact that there are many cases of it in Wexford. Those concerned will not even be caught in the risk-based assessment. A lot of thinking must be done on this. The Government will have to spend more on it or we will continue to have a contaminated water table, which I believe is directly linked to the high rate of cancer in Ireland.

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