Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and I would appreciate if he would do so. Clearly ten years is an unacceptable wait for residents for flood relief works to be completed. It is very important that people get their heads together. Everybody in the House would agree that families should not have to live in fear of the next flood. This is what people in Sandymount and Ringsend are worried about.

In a related matter, in June there was a discharge by Uisce Éireann of large volumes of raw sewage directly onto the shoreline in Sandymount with no warning to the community and no clean up effort by Uisce Éireann. The utter lack of respect shown to users of Sandymount Strand by the likes of Uisce Éireann is an absolute disgrace. No community should be subjected to raw sewage being released onto a beach, which is an amenity and a biosphere.

Uisce Éireann has also refused to deal with the serious problem caused by ectocarpus algae along the strand. It strikes me as no coincidence that we see a large bloom of algae following the discharge of wastewater into the bay from the Ringsend and Sandymount treatment plant. The look and foul odour of the algae leaves much of the strand unusable. Residents have repeatedly sought action from the council to combat the algae on the strand. Like so many other issues, their concerns seem to fall on deaf ears. The algae look and smell like faeces. The levels of algae on Sandymount Strand in recent years have increased dramatically. It is not a coincidence that these levels of foul algae have increased with the increase of raw sewage discharges into Dublin Bay.

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