Batt O'Keeffe (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senator Quinn for raising the important issue of keeping the public informed about the quality of the water supply. Delivery of a quality customer service has been a central objective of the modernisation programme that has been under way in the local government sector for a number of years. A customer service group was established in May 2003 as part of the overall process. A list of 42 service indicators was published in January 2004 under the title Delivering Value for People — Service Indicators in Local Authorities. I am committed to the service indicators initiative because it will identify good practice and under-performance across the range of local authority services. It will allow for good practice to be shared and under-performance to be addressed. In essence, it is a management tool with a very public face.

All 34 city and county authorities have been asked to measure their performances against the 42 indicators which span all the main service areas. There is a specific indicator on drinking water quality which requires local authorities to report on the percentage of drinking water analysis results in compliance with statutory requirements with regard to both public and private schemes, where appropriate. These figures are derived from the sampling results local authorities are obliged to submit to the EPA. In turn, the EPA publishes an annual report on the quality of drinking water nationally. The report is available to the public directly from the EPA and may be downloaded from its website.

The performance results for each year, starting with 2004, must be sent to the Local Government Management Services Board by the end of March of the following year. The board will report directly to me on the 2004 results by June 2005, including the outcome of a verification process, under which an independent assessment panel will examine and assess a number at random.

Local authorities will be expected to publish performance results in their annual reports and any other appropriate medium to allow all stakeholders to gauge performance. They are also being encouraged to post them on their websites. Any other local initiative to further publicise the results will be very welcome and encouraging.

I am glad to note that the latest Environmental Protection Agency report, which focuses on drinking water quality in 2003, has confirmed the fundamentally good quality and continuing improvement of standards in Ireland. The report is based on the results of 235,042 individual tests on 26,987 samples of drinking water which were taken by local authorities and the EPA in 2003. The tests demonstrated a compliance rate of 97.7% in public water supplies which is an increase from the 2002 rate of 97.4%. There was further welcome improvement in the overall compliance rate among group water schemes which rose to 91.8% from 91.5% in 2002. The Senator will be aware of the major programme of targeted investment by my Department to ensure that group water scheme supplies will soon be of the same quality as their local authority counterparts. Many of the major schemes have come to an end and there is a greater focus on local schemes to ensure they meet the required standard.

Under the drinking water regulations which came into force in January 2004, a local authority must ensure there is no potential danger to human health in the event that it discovers a water supply to be non-compliant with a prescribed standard. The regulations require the provision to consumers of information on the precautionary measures and remedial action to be taken in such cases. My Department completed recently a drinking water national monitoring study to assist local authorities to implement the requirements of the drinking water regulations. The implementation programme is intended to ensure uniformity of sampling, testing and reporting of drinking water quality. It is expected to result in the provision of more robust and accessible data for comparison and analysis than has hitherto been available. In addition, the Water Services Bill 2003 will, when enacted, enable me to provide where necessary for the general availability of records of monitoring and inspection of water supplies.

It is clear from the foregoing that a substantial amount of information is accessible by the public on the quality of the water supplied by local authorities. Nevertheless, the Senator's contribution has been significant. I will certainly bear it in mind and consider it carefully to ensure local authorities are more proactive in making detailed analytical data available in the context of the forthcoming report of the Local Government Management Services Board and any future revisions to the indicators.