Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My Department’s new multi-annual rural water programme 2016 to 2018 was developed through a working group of key stakeholders involving local authorities, the water services transition office, Irish Water, the National Federation of Group Water Schemes, as well as my Department. The programme provides for the funding of demonstration group sewerage schemes through measure 4(d), where clustering of households on individual septic tanks is not a viable option, particularly from an environmental perspective.

Local authorities were invited in January 2016 to submit bids under the programme. The invitation envisaged no more than two demonstration group sewerage projects being brought forward under the measure in any one year of the three-year programme. The demonstrations will allow my Department, over the course of the programme, to determine the appropriate enduring funding levels and relationship with the current grant scheme.

As new demonstration group schemes have been identified for the duration of the programme, and as only two demonstration projects can be advanced in any given year, my Department does not propose to modify the programme at this point. My Department will give consideration to the scope of the measure under the programme from 2019 onwards having regard to the implementation of the existing multi-annual rural water programme 2016 to 2018. My Department will also be giving wider consideration to the report of the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services as it relates to the rural water programme.

This issue has been raised by many other colleagues, including Deputy Durkan, who is also in the Chamber. We are aware of the matter but there is no scheme in place with enough money to deal with all the applications. Deputy Moynihan's own area of Cork would have applied for about five under that scheme. There were 83 in total. We are limited to two per year at this time.

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