Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise this issue. It was interesting to listen to the Minister of State's response to the issue raised by Deputy Joe Carey regarding the Ennis water supply. I hope the state-of-the-art sewerage plant scheduled to come on stream next year will be much more successful than the Ringsend plant in my constituency of Dublin South-East where the entire process has been farcical, to say the least.

I will raise two connected and significant issues. First, as reported in the media in the past week, the Ringsend sewage treatment plant is operating at between 20% and 30% above its capacity. I have found it difficult to obtain concrete information, other than a submission to An Bord Pleanála, from Dublin City Council on this matter. It is astonishing that the Minister has claimed population growth in Dublin city could not be predicted. The CSO's prediction of even greater population growth than we have experienced contradicts the Minister's bizarre and ridiculous claim, made on the national broadcaster, that he did not know what population growth was expected in the capital city.

Second, Dublin City Council paid a startling sum of money to the ABA consortium which has operated the Ringsend sewage treatment plant in a shameful fashion. Not only was the sum of €38 million paid out, but it was sanctioned by the Minister who represents the constituency in which the plant is located. It is extraordinary that the Minister who sanctioned this payment has, in press statements and media interviews, called for an investigation into how the payment was made and went wrong. This would be laughable if it were not so serious.

The reason I object to the payment of a substantial sum to the ABA consortium is that it did not honour the contract it signed up to in terms of operating the sewage treatment plant in Ringsend. In response to a recent question I submitted to Dublin City Council, I received an extraordinary update in which the council detailed the short-term remedial works which have been done at the plant since 2006. The company covered channels, installed additional odour control units and improved sludge handling and drying. These steps should have been taken from day one. The plant was sold to the people of Dublin as a state-of-the-art facility in 2003.

The long-term works referred to in the council's reply included the covering of the primary treatment tanks. A sewage treatment plant was built in the centre of a large urban population without the tanks being covered up and Dublin City Council is surprised to learn that an odour was emanating from the facility. The company which constructed the plant clearly did not do what it should have done to ensure it was of an adequate standard to serve the population of Dublin. Having failed to do this work, Dublin City Council did not have the capacity to demand from the company any form of accountability. The ABA consortium should have paid for the remedial works but was instead paid by Dublin City Council to do works it should have done in the first instance. It is a fundamental flaw of the public-private partnership process that the contracts signed do not include penalty clauses. This is a major problem across the board.

I wish Deputy Joe Carey luck regarding the sewage treatment plant in County Clare. I hope it is not the disaster we, in Dublin South-East, have had to endure for the past five years.

Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I am pleased to reassure the House, on behalf of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, that there is no imminent threat to water quality in Dublin Bay. This is clearly demonstrated by the Environmental Protection Agency's bathing water quality report for 2007, which shows all bathing areas from Skerries to Killiney comply with EU standards. Indeed, Dollymount Strand has also gained a blue flag in recognition of premium water quality.

I am also pleased to confirm that Dublin City Council reports that the Ringsend plant consistently meets the required effluent standards for treated waste water. The Minister is aware of suggestions in recent days that the plant is operating beyond capacity but this needs to be qualified in order for the full picture to be seen. Capacity can be calculated in a number of ways, namely, from influent flow, biochemical oxygen demand, BOD, suspended solids, chemical oxygen demand and nutrients, each of which would give a different capacity figure. When a plant is being designed, it must have sufficient capability to deal with load fluctuations higher than the design average on all these parameters.

The design capacity of the Ringsend plant is a nominal 1.64 million population equivalent, average load, based on BOD. The plant provides secondary treatment to approximately 99% of waste water arising in the Dublin region. It deals with the waste water treatment needs of approximately 1.1 million people, with the non-domestic load associated with areas as far apart as Dún Laoghaire, Ratoath, Ashbourne and Portmarnock. The critical fact is that the required effluent standards are being met. This has transformed water quality in Dublin Bay and that improvement is being maintained.

While water quality in Dublin Bay has greatly improved, the Minister is aware that there were protracted delays during the commissioning and testing of the new plant in 2002, when difficulties were experienced in achieving the required performance standards. In particular, he is conscious of the odour problems that were experienced by residents in his and Deputy Creighton's constituency within a short time of the plant coming into operation and that have occurred intermittently since. Works under way to resolve this issue are due for completion later this year.

To resolve as many as possible of the questions surrounding the design and capacity of the plant and past efforts to deal with the odour issue, the Minister is arranging for an independent examination of the design parameters of the works to determine whether they adequately addressed existing and projected loads at the time they were approved. A broad range of issues will be considered during this examination. These include the appropriateness of the design capacity of the plant, having regard to the information available at that time; the volume and timing of actual waste water loads going to the plant by comparison to the load projections when the design capacity was determined; and the factors that contributed to the odour problems and the effectiveness of the actions taken to deal with such odours. The Minister expects to be in a position very shortly to appoint a suitably qualified person to carry out the examination and report back to him before the end of the summer.