Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail)

I am glad to see the Minister attending the House for this legislation. I fully appreciate where the Bill is coming from. On this side of the House, we all appreciate the need to protect our water sources, including springs and wells. We agree with the Minister in that respect but I disagree with him on other matters. In the last paragraph of his speech, the Minister stated that people living in the countryside need have nothing to fear from this legislation. I am not sure what planet that statement is coming from. The reality is that people living in the countryside have everything to fear from the manner in which this legislation is being brought forward. I will go through the points in detail in a few moments.

As drafted, the legislation ultimately criminalises people with septic tanks. There are 475,000 people living in rural areas with septic tanks. On the basis of about four people living in each house, that equates to between 1.5 million and 2 million people. It goes beyond that because urban dwellers - be they in Kilkenny, Cork, Waterford, Dublin or Galway - who may have holiday homes in the country will also be affected by this measure. By extension, one could argue that the vast majority of people living in the State will be affected by this legislation.

The Bill will have drastic consequences and I will get to the nuts and bolts of it in a moment. I appreciate that the legislation has arisen as a result of the European Court of Justice ruling following complaints that were made by various do-gooder organisations in this State that appealed to the European Commission. It its ruling, however, the European Court of Justice did not specify the manner in which Ireland had to comply or impose sanctions on people with septic tanks. The court did not go into any detail on that regard in its ruling. It spoke about fines but it is worth pointing out that the European Court of Justice has never imposed a fine on this State. In fact, it has only ever imposed nine fines on member states. Four such fines were imposed on Greece, as well as France and Portugal. Some people may say, "We're going to be fined by Europe and the big fines are going to come", but I think it is time we told Europe where to get off on issues such as this.