Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State’s printed statement was not circulated earlier. We seem to be getting into the habit of this. Printed statements are very useful if we cannot be in the Chamber at the start of a debate. Therefore, I ask that they be made available in future.

Listening to the debate, it has been interesting to note that many of the issues talked about are very small local ones – individual constituents’ cases in some instances. When Uisce Éireann was set up it, there was a huge investment in it. There was a huge amount of political will to get it up and running. That Uisce Éireann has not even been able to provide information and deal with the specific issues is quite illustrative of how it is dealing with matters. As with many of my colleagues, I find it impossible to get answers from Uisce Éireann. It has actually created an additional bureaucratic layer such that when you contact the Oireachtas line, you are just put on hold. Usually, you hear nothing, or you do not hear anything for weeks or months, by which time the problem you are calling about may be resolved or the people will have become so frustrated because their local TD could not even get a simple answer out of Irish Water, the entity established to provide solutions to their problems with water supply and treatment, that they give up and stop making contact. If the Minister of State is to take anything from these statements today, it is that Uisce Éireann has to be accountable. It gets an awful lot of money from the public purse to do a job, and if there is no basic accountability, we are going to be in a very difficult position. We have been in a difficult position.

Many Members have spoken about Irish Water in respect of the need for housing. Absolutely, there are huge challenges, and the lack of investment in certain areas is stalling the growth of communities. I will go into that in a little more detail later.

I want to talk about the issues from an environmental perspective because we often forget about the environmental impacts of Uisce Éireann not meeting its statutory requirements or indeed its EU requirements when it comes to water management and treatment. All the time, we hear about the problems when it comes to agriculture and the impact of agriculture on our water systems. There are major problems in this regard but we also have very many problems because Irish Water is not doing what it needs to be doing when it comes to treating water. The EPA report from last year highlights that, as it does every year. The EPA consistently rings alarm bells about this. Last year, its report on wastewater indicated that 50% of urban wastewater treatment plants in Ireland were failing to meet EU standards on effluent quality and that raw sewage from the equivalent of 40,000 people was entering our rivers and estuaries every day. Clearly, therefore, there are problems. The EPA makes various recommendations, which it does every year, but unfortunately many of the recommendations are not acted upon.

When I looked through the report – I have read various analyses – I found it really interesting to note that often when it comes to problems with water pollution and Uisce Éireann, it is not big infrastructural problems that are the issue. It is not that they require major investment. It is often a case of small things, such as an alarm not going off or nobody being notified if a pump stops or a generator fails.

If you google "Irish Water and water quality", you will see report after report on where there have been failings. Raw sewage flowed into a town in Cavan for a week after Uisce Éireann failed to spot a pump failure. That should have been easily avoidable. It is just a matter of an alarm system. It does not require major, complex infrastructure; rather, it requires an alarm. Many of the problems we see concerning Uisce Éireann are because of very basic things. That absolutely should be a focus of the work it is doing. The EPA report states Uisce Éireann reported 1,141 short-duration or once-off environmental incidents during 2023. Almost half of these were caused by equipment breakdowns and issues with the operation and maintenance of treatment plants. This is stuff it should have down pat. It should be doing it. It gets enough money to do so. It does not entail large-scale infrastructure. Even if Uisce Éireann were to get that part of its remit right, it would certainly take us a long way.

Locally, in Bray, we had an incident over the Christmas period that meant people could not swim for five days. The annual charity swim was cancelled. Again, it was because of a simple thing. We have major problems with the odour emanating from wastewater treatment plants in Wicklow, including in Greystones and the Murrough. These are simple things that should be resolved but they go on for years and years and there does not seem to be any indication that Uisce Éireann is getting on top of this.

It is not all negative and I will give credit where credit is due, as did Deputy Malcolm Byrne. Arklow is not in my constituency anymore but it was for a long time. The project in that town was stalled and was really in limbo land, and that went on for many years. I ask the Minister of State to pass on that the communication between the team and the locals during the entire construction period was excellent. I want that passed on because it is not all negative. There are elements, for sure, that can work, but there are many areas where the system is not working properly. I ask that the Minister of State look into this.

I want to raise a number of issues on behalf of my colleague Deputy Holly Cairns.

Deputy Cairns raised these issues, specific to her locality, over the previous term on a consistent basis but, unfortunately, they are still issues down there. One of the issues she wanted me to raise were the housing developments in Clonakilty, Dunmanway, Kinsale and the Beara Peninsula. There is a stalling of these developments because of a lack of infrastructure. I know there are complications because there are freshwater pearl mussels there that are protected but there has to be a way of both protecting that species and making sure we have enough water so that the communities down there can grow and sustain the people in those areas.

In Shannonvale, residents continue to deal with a daily nightmare of a sewage tank overflowing into the village green space. It is just incredible that in this day and age, we have a sewage tank that is overflowing in a locality like that. In Ballydehob, the wastewater treatment plant, which is little more than a basic septic tank, is not fit for purpose. This has been going on for ten years and has caused massive ongoing pollution in Ballydehob Bay, emitting effluent into a special area of conservation protected under the EU habitats directive.

The EPA issued an order recently to Uisce Éireann on this but it had issued similar orders in 2009 and 2014 and here we are in 2025 with the same problem still. There is a clear lack of accountability with Uisce Éireann. If there was one thing the Government could get a handle on, it should be making sure that when Uisce Éireann is tasked with a job and funded to do a job, it does that job and it does it properly.

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