Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. The objective behind it is that we would have a strategic plan for regional development and make it a reality by investing in our water and waste water infrastructure in towns and villages across the country. I welcome the contribution by the Aire Stáit, who is accepting the core principle behind our motion and the motion itself. The reality is that local employment opportunities are being stalled as a result of the failure to upgrade and provide waste water treatment facilities across our country. Our towns and villages need this investment, this necessary infrastructure, to provide for clean water and waste water treatment facilities to attract families to live, work and raise their children in these rural communities across the country. This infrastructure is an essential part of growing these particular communities.

The latest EPA report is highly critical of Irish Water's delivery of new waste water treatment plants. The report highlights 35 towns and villages that continue to discharge raw sewage into nearby waters. Sadly, in the part of the country I represent, east Galway, we actually have raw sewage running in the streets of villages because of the lack of waste water treatment facilities. It is going to be very hard to bring investment into those villages and those communities when that is what visitors to them can experience, and it should not happen in the current society.

The lack of this basic infrastructure is being compounded by measures within county development plans right across the country which effectively ban the construction of one-off rural housing. The new county development plans will prioritise cluster developments near existing settlements with waste water treatment facilities. This will decimate existing communities where people cannot build on their own land and now cannot live in their own parish because they have no serviced lands. There is no point talking about planning for future housing needs in regional growth centres like Athlone, the town shared by myself and the Minister of State, if we do not have the basic infrastructure in place. I will give a practical example of what I am talking about. Monksland, the community on the County Roscommon side of Athlone, requires a new network upgrade and a new treatment plant in order to cater for increased demand. The Government has designated that community, as well as the rest of Athlone, as a major growth centre that will see substantial growth in the years ahead. However, half the town cannot expand because we do not have those facilities. The two closest villages to Monksland, Brideswell and Curraghboy, do not have any waste water treatment facilities and there are no plans to provide any. Where then are the young people of south Roscommon going to live? Irish Water needs to publish a five-year sewerage plan for every single county across the country because that type of strategic plan is not there.

As bad as the situation is in south Roscommon, it is absolutely deplorable in east Galway. Villages like Kiltormer, Aughrim, Kilreekil, New Inn, Kilconnell, Ballymacward, Caltra, Castleblakeney and Menlough have no waste water treatment facilities. All those communities will not be able to retain their own existing young populations unless they have access to that basic infrastructure. We then turn to the mother and father of all challenges: Mountbellew, which is the biggest town in County Galway outside Ballinasloe and has a massive hinterland. The design for the waste water treatment facility there has been completed and a site identified for it but there is no funding to proceed with construction of the project. We are therefore saying to communities right across east Galway that they must either live in Ballinasloe or migrate to Galway or Dublin. How is that going to solve the housing and congestion challenges we have in those cities? We cannot even provide young couples with serviced sites.

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