Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to praise the staff of Irish Water, in particular those working in water services at local authority level. They are the people we see out at all hours of the night in wind and rain addressing local issues. I wish to discuss two areas. The first is Bailieborough, the town I live in, and the second is Virginia, County Cavan. Sadly, over recent months there have been a lot of water outages, which happened because the wastewater plant has gone way beyond the capacity it was designed to deliver. It needs a serious upgrade.

Cavan County Council and private developers are working with might and main to deliver social housing. East Cavan is closest to the city of Dublin and the N3, which is currently at design stage for a bypass of Virginia. All our housing projects are being hampered because we do not have the wastewater treatment plants we need for Bailieborough and Virginia. One particular development Cavan County Council wants to commence comprises 45 houses. It has decided a separate independent wastewater plant will have to be developed and then decommissioned after the housing estate is built. At least 200 houses cannot be built in the two towns because we do not have the required wastewater capacity. Anything that can be done to accelerate the two projects will go a huge way towards giving us the housing supply we need in east Cavan.

See this speech in context