Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

From the State's perspective, the best economic use of resources is to build up the infrastructure in the towns. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae's point is valid that where towns do not have sewage treatment facilities, that presents an additional difficulty.

We considered the EPA report yesterday, for example, at the climate change Cabinet sub-committee. We are down to approximately 20 clean rivers in the country. That is not the fault of housing. That could be the intensification of agriculture or whatever. However, we have gone from 500 rivers in pristine condition to 20. We all need to reflect on that as we all seek exemptions, changes etc. It is a very serious situation in terms of our groundwater and of the quality of our rivers. When one looks at the thousands of septic tanks all over the country, one begins to see that we have a lot of work to do to clean up our rivers and to improve significantly the quality of our waters.

The Government intends to further increase the allocation of funding to Irish Water to make sure, as priority, that where any town is discharging raw sewage into rivers or harbours, we will work to ensure they have a sewage treatment plant in place. There are approximately 35 such locations at the moment. That should be an immediate priority. This will enable us to ensure that people find it easier to live in villages and towns across rural Ireland. That is something I am very committed to doing because we cannot hang around too much longer with raw sewage being discharged into rivers and harbours. This is a very challenging and serious issue. I take the Deputy's point, in some instances, but we have a real problem in terms of pollution, the environment more generally and the quality of our water supplies.

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