Robbie Gallagher (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Ar dtús, ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an Aire Stáit go dtí an Teach seo ar maidin. The Minister of State is very welcome to the House this morning and I thank him for his presence. I want to discuss the issue of rural sewerage schemes. The Minister of State's Department has a multi-annual rural water programme that runs from 2016 to 2018. It is due to expire at the end of this year. One of the areas for which funding can be got is group sewerage schemes where clusters of households are on septic tanks, which in many cases are troublesome from an environmental perspective. As the scheme is due to expire, I am interested to know the Minister of State's plans for a new scheme and how it will evolve under his new announcement. There was huge demand in terms of uptake of the current scheme. I understand 17 local authorities made applications and 83 submissions for funding were received from those local authorities. Unfortunately, in its current guise the scheme is very limited, as the Minister of State is aware, in that only two schemes in the State are funded each year. I am sure he will agree that is inadequate, and I ask that he might address that to ensure every county would benefit from some form of funding to deal with this issue.

As I said, the scheme in its present guise is quite limited and onerous on members of the public. Householders who wish to form as a group to seek funding have to form a limited company, hire engineers and collect moneys. That is onerous on the groups involved. I would like to see the local authority taking complete control of such issues and taking the burden off people who, with all due respect to them, are not qualified to deal with them. In many cases, the local authority has an overriding function to ensure all matters are dealt with accordingly, so that should be taken from the local authority. I would welcome Minister of State's comments on that.

The other issue the Minister of State might comment on, while we are graced with his presence, is funding for individual septic tanks. When people were asked to register their tanks initially, it was done under the perception from Government that funding would be made available to householders with troublesome septic tanks. Unfortunately, when they registered, it became clear that was not the case. People are only eligible for funding where a member of a local authority discovers that a septic tank is not functioning properly. That is unfair and that scheme should be looked at also.

I thank the Minister of State again for his presence here and I would welcome his comments on both issues.