Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We expect the report the Minister has commissioned in respect of requirements for smaller villages and settlements that do not have access to public water and wastewater infrastructure to be completed in the coming weeks.

It will be a help to answer the question posed by the Deputy. I appreciate that the preparation of the report includes a broad range of research and consultation with a large number of stakeholders, particularly local authorities. The research element of the report focuses on villages and similar settlements without public wastewater infrastructure in the context of compiling secondary data currently available and existing commitments made by Government to support the sustainable growth of rural economies and communities. At this stage, our Department has reported some high-level analysis of the survey results. These indicate that some 643 villages and similar settlements spread across 25 rural local authorities do not have access to public wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure. That is something we aim to address with Irish Water through the capital investment that we have in place.

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