Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail)

The Bill provides that the owner of a premises connected to a domestic waste water treatment system shall ensure the system does not constitute a risk to public health or the environment and, in particular, does not adversely affect the countryside. If one adversely affects the countryside in the operation of one's system, one is guilty of a crime. One's prosecution will be recorded as part of the soft information of the Garda Síochána and any conviction will be recorded on a criminal record. In fact, this section does absolutely nothing.

Paragraph (h), which will become (g), allows the EPA to put any other information as it might determine on the record. Presumably, it cannot put any prosecutions on the record but there is nothing to stop it from putting convictions on the record, if it wishes. This is pointless. It is a sop to rural Ireland to give the impression that the criminality under this legislation associated with ordinary people operating their ordinary systems is eliminated when, in fact, it is not. The Minister is not giving them any help to upgrade their systems so that they can comply with the law. All the Minister is doing is not requiring a local authority to do something that authorities will do anyway.

This information will be on the public record. It will be in newspapers because any prosecutions that are brought to court will be conducted in public. There was no need to do this. The legislation will still criminalise people. They will be expected to maintain standards under threat of criminal liability and those standards are very unclear and, in the case I outlined, very broad. There is no point in the Minister thinking that people are happy about this or that the anger has died down. I could not believe it the other day when I knocked on doors about a road project - people are still up in arms about this.