Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Chair for allowing me to raise the need for the group sewerage scheme grant to be raised to the same level as the group water scheme. It might not be directly relevant to the Minister for Social and Family Affairs but I welcome him to the House to answer my query.

We must ask what aspirations we have for the future of the environment. My home town does not have a sewerage scheme so the sewage runs raw into the River Foyle. We battled for nearly 30 years for a tertiary treatment plant that could improve the situation but, further up the Foyle, the major scheme there is already part of the programme. The difficulty lies in ensuring that An Bord Pleanála gets what it needs to approve the scheme.

Our approach to the large schemes, however, is not mirrored by the situation with smaller schemes. At one time, a number of people came to me looking for a group sewerage scheme closer to Muff, further up the Foyle. The people of Ture worked hard to put together a scheme but when they put together the figures, it turned out that they had mistakenly been looking at those for a group water scheme and, given the levels of grant subventions for group sewerage schemes, it was not practical. I have raised this before and was told there is no demand for the scheme so there is no point in putting it together. It is a chicken and egg situation, however, because if it is not viable in view of the level of grant, there will be no demand.

Do we want to create such a demand? Yes, on the basis that because there are so many rural dwellings and one-off houses, there are septic tanks all over the country. European directives are changing the monitoring, cleaning and evaluation process for septic tanks so it makes economic and environmental sense to encourage people into the group sewerage scheme and away from the septic tanks and puriflow systems. There has been a review of group sewerage schemes but instead of carrying out pilot projects, we should take a further step and ensure the group sewerage scheme grant is increased to the same level as the group water scheme. We will then give an indication at individual level that we want to improve the environment.

A lot of voluntary effort goes into the planning for group schemes — the Ture group spent a long time working on the scheme. Currently, however, the group sewerage scheme allows for 75% of the cost up to a value of €2,031, compared to 85% of the cost up to a value of €7,619 for a group water scheme if 90% of people in the area support it, a significant difference. The group sewerage scheme support in CLÁR areas is better but 100% of people must want to join and, in reality, very few places exist where 100% of people will sign up to anything. Even the 100% versus 90% in non-CLÁR group water scheme areas makes a difference.

I raise the group sewerage scheme today because I am also worried about bigger schemes. Carndonagh is one of the few places that has a good sewerage scheme on the Inishowen peninsula. There were lengthy delays with the Malin sewerage scheme when it should have been an extension of Carndonagh. As a result, it fell under the new criterion whereby the local authority had to pay a considerable amount to the scheme. In areas like mine, there has been little investment in business so our ability to generate co-financing for such basic infrastructure is curtailed, particularly when the price of new sewerage schemes is so high.