Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)

Every day we come to the House, we are hear about housing, housing, housing. During the week, the EPA released a report on the inspections of septic tanks by local authorities. Areas were targeted where septic tanks were near rivers. The councils completed 1,390 inspections of tanks and found that 82% of the tanks were inadequate. We are talking about meeting housing targets here. What the EPA has not done is look at the treatment systems going straight into rivers, which we have been looking to have upgraded for decades.

I have been working in construction all of my life and I still am. We have given ideas to the likes of Uisce Éireann about how they could have more sewerage capacity in towns or villages on the same systems they have already if they separated the storm water from the sewage. In all towns, villages and cities, when they are piped from the houses out to the main street they all go into the one pipe. We gave Uisce Éireann the idea of putting in separators for water. At the moment, our treatment systems are working at their best during the summer because they are not dealing with water and are way below capacity. Some 25% to 30% of our sewerage systems are working perfectly during the summer. During the winter, what we are now treating is approximately 70% water. When the sewage comes in with the water and comes to a certain level in the treatment system, nothing gets treated because it goes out over the baffle wall and straight into the waterways around Ireland. This means that all the rivers and streams, and all the sewerage heads all around the country, are untreated because we do not have the proper people dealing with it.

Uisce Éireann, to me, is a runaway train. It is not giving value for money. It is not listening to anyone. There are solutions for our systems in this country to give us clean water by putting in different systems in order to deal with the equipment we have at the moment. Then we can upgrade as we can afford to do so. Uisce Éireann is not listening to common sense or to other engineers who say the technology is there to do what we need to do.

What we have to do is very simple, but Uisce Éireann tells us that this system is broken and that system is broken. Uisce Éireann is not listening to an engineering solution to help to build more houses with the same systems we have at the moment by just separating the storm water from the sewage. That is what I am asking for.

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