Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil leis na Seanadóirí go léir as an obair thábhachtach seo. I thank Senator Garvey and her colleagues for tabling this motion and, more generally, I thank all the Senators. It has been an informative and useful debate. We should never underestimate the significance or importance of such debates in the Seanad. They are important. We can never debate the issue of water enough, either in this House or in the Dáil. Moreover, I thank everyone for the passion they have brought to the debate.

The Programme for Government: Our Shared Future sets a high level of ambition around sustainable water management. It contains over 30 commitments specific to water matters which are directed towards overcoming the infrastructural deficits that impact on the provision of safe and secure drinking water supplies, lead to pollution and environmental damage and challenge the achievement of sustainable development across urban and rural Ireland.

I am grateful to have this opportunity to outline the Government's course of action and the progress already being made. If I can address any specific issues, I will do so but I appeal to Senators who have raised specific matters to contact me directly and I will try to address them.

The past decade has seen a significant period of institutional reform in the approach to the delivery of water services as well as the governance and practice of water protection. However, significant and complex challenges remain. We must continue to build on these reforms. We will continue high levels of investment in water service infrastructure and strengthen measures to address water pollution.

Irish Water is now delivering a coherent approach to water services and is firmly established as the national public water utility. It has strengthened the delivery and management of water services investment. A robust policy and funding architecture is now in place for public water services following the report of the Joint Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Services published in April 2017. Robust governance, accountability and oversight arrangements are in place, with economic regulation by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and environmental regulation by the EPA.An Fóram Uisce and the Water Advisory Body have specific roles to oversee the performance of Irish Water. As we heard during today's debate, Ireland's waters are subject to growing environmental pressures. While some water bodies have improved in recent years, overall water quality is in decline. This is primarily due to nutrient pollution in rivers. Today, just over half of Ireland's surface water bodies meet the standards set out by the EU water framework directive to achieve "good" status or higher. Reversing the deterioration within the statutory timeframe set by EU member states at 2027 is a formidable challenge and effective measures are now required. The condition of remaining surface water bodies is "moderate", "poor" or "bad". Groundwater is in better condition, with more than 90% of bodies achieving "good" status.

The excessive loss of nutrients from farmland and waste water discharges represents the most significant impact on water quality, followed by siltation due to sediment run-off into rivers and changes to flow patterns in rivers. These pressures were set out again in the EPA state of the environment report, published on 24 November 2020, which highlights raw sewage discharges to water from 35 towns and villages, loss of pristine water quality status from more than 500 areas in the 1980s to 20 in 2020, and increasing nutrient damage in rivers and marine environments.

To meet these challenges in a sustainable way, Ireland must act on three fronts. We need to continue with the institutional reforms that will ensure Irish Water, in particular, delivers on its potential to become a world-class public utility to serve current and future needs of the Irish people, acknowledging, as was raised by Members, current issues around SLAs, local authorities and those talks. We need to provide the investment required to ensure we meet our EU drinking water and waste water services obligations, while supporting balanced urban and rural development. We need to protect our rivers, lakes and groundwater by including improved measures in the next river basin management plan, including by modernising our legal framework and working across Government to address water quality, climate change and biodiversity losses in an integrated way.

In terms of institutional reform, Irish Water and local authorities have made real progress, working together since 2014, in unifying our public water systems nationwide. The programme for Government includes a commitment to "retain Irish Water in public ownership as a national, standalone, regulated utility" while ensuring it is sufficiently funded to fulfil its role. In February, the Government published a policy paper on water sector transformation, which charts the course for completing the institutional reform programme by fully integrating water services operations within Irish Water's structure by 2022. The aim of this is to achieve a world-class, publicly owned national water services utility and bring greater coherence to managing water services and delivery in its environmental impact across the country. The Workplace Relations Commission has been asked to work with all parties to progress the significant change programme which is required to deliver this. The Government believes it will be possible to reach a collective agreement which will address the interests and concerns of all key stakeholders, including workers, local authorities and Irish Water, while delivering a world-class utility for citizens.

Separately, the Government will shortly publish the general scheme of a Bill to establish Irish Water as a stand-alone utility separated from the Ervia group, which is hoped to be enacted this year. This is an important step to providing reassurance on the development of a national, publicly owned water utility.

In terms of investment, the water services policy statement 2018-2025 sets out the broad vision and policy objectives for the development of water and waste water services in Ireland. The statement's three thematic objectives of quality, conservation and future-proofing are aligned with the national development plan, NDP, the national planning framework and the river basin management plan for Ireland, 2018-2021. Irish Water's investment plans are framed in this context. The NDP is based on a forecast spend of almost €8.5 billion in public water services by Irish Water over the ten years from 2018 to 2027. This was based on known investment needs, at the earlier stages of Irish Water’s establishment, to support the continued operation, repair and upgrading of the country’s water and waste water infrastructure to support sustainable social, economic and environmental progress. These forecasts will be updated as part of the current review of the NDP. Approximately 80% of Irish Water’s funding requirement is met through the Government’s Voted Exchequer investment in Irish Water. This stands at €1.3 billion in 2021 and it is directly related to the cost of providing domestic water services.This high level of investment will be maintained to achieve greater environmental compliance, overcome challenges in water and wastewater treatment infrastructure, address unacceptably high water leakage rates, service future housing and development needs and ensure security of supply across the country.

The programme for Government also commits to supporting the take-up of Irish Water’s small towns and villages growth programme. This was devised by Irish Water to provide water and wastewater growth capacity in smaller settlements through an investment fund of almost €100 million with the approval of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU. Irish Water expects to notify local authorities of successful projects on a staggered basis over the coming weeks and months as project details are decided.

Equally important is the Exchequer support provided through the rural water programme for water and wastewater services in areas which are not served by the public water system. I acknowledge the incredible voluntary contribution of group water schemes in maintaining the vibrancy of rural communities. Approximately 6% of the population has its drinking water supplied by community-run group water schemes. In addition, almost 10% of the population relies on private wells. Nearly 30% of households are not connected to public wastewater services and depend on septic tanks, group wastewater treatment schemes or other arrangements. The rural water programme provides for priority investment needs which will support proper planning and sustainable development in rural areas. It also helps Ireland meet its water framework directive commitments.

In terms of the wider environment, Ireland’s second River Basin Management Plan 2018-2021 outlines the measures adopted to improve water quality in Ireland’s groundwater, rivers, and lakes, estuarine and coastal waters during the current planning cycle. Its priorities include compliance with EU directives such as the urban wastewater treatment directive; prevention of deterioration in water status; meeting the objectives for designated protected areas such as bathing waters and shellfish growing waters; protection of high-status waters; and implementation of targeted actions and pilot schemes in priority areas aimed at targeting status improvements in water bodies close to meeting their objective while addressing more complex issues that will build knowledge for the next cycle.

Key actions have focused on addressing agricultural discharges and investment in wastewater infrastructure as two areas of significant pressures on waters. Despite decades of success in addressing industrial pollution and major urban discharges, we are now experiencing declines in water body status mainly due to diffuse pollution. The third cycle river basin management plan will seek to reverse this trend. Building on the new governance structures implemented under the second plan and adopting a cross-Department, multi-agency approach, the plan will set out the environmental objectives to be achieved up to 2027, as well as identifying the measures needed to achieve these objectives.

In preparing this plan, three critical phases of public consultation are to be completed. The Department has recently completed the second phase of consultation on the significant water management issues. Informed by the results of this consultation, a draft river basin management plan is currently being prepared. It will be opened for another phase of consultation before being finalised for publication by the end of this year. This third plan will include strong additional measures such as new rules around the protection of drinking water sources; the limitation or mitigation of agricultural inputs; the management of Ireland’s 500,000 septic tanks; careful afforestation practices; controls on the abstraction of water; and actions to prevent soil run-off, among other responses. Ireland’s water environment legal code also needs substantial attention to give coherent effect to relevant EU directives.

The recent Environmental Protection Agency state of the environment report has also usefully drawn attention to the interconnectedness of our environmental challenges, along with the consequent need for integrated policy responses and an overarching environmental policy statement. Every such opportunity will be explored in finalising Ireland’s third river basin management plan to ensure actions and methodologies required to tackle water quality issues will also serve to address climate change obligations and biodiversity losses. By working coherently in this way, we can achieve better environmental outcomes all round.

I have set out in broad terms the Government’s water services policy programme, which is centred on completing necessary institutional reforms, ensuring the required level of investment and protecting our rivers, lakes, estuaries, coastal waters and groundwater. Demonstrable progress is being made in addressing the challenges we face. The Government will continue to deliver strongly on the ambitious commitments to water services contained in the programme for Government.This work includes: the recent publication of the policy paper on water sector transformation, which charts the course for the full integration of water services operations within Irish Water’s structure by 2022; advancing the general scheme for a Bill to establish Irish Water as a national, stand-alone, regulated utility in public ownership, with a view to its enactment in 2021; updating Irish Water's investment programme under the national development plan review to ensure enhanced support for sustainable urban and rural development; finalising Ireland's third river basin management plan in order to deliver on our obligations to protect our water bodies from further decline and to restore water quality in a manner that is consistent with climate change and biodiversity objectives; and strengthening the rural water programme.

In this way, we are ensuring that effective arrangements are in place to "provide for the management, treatment and distribution of safe water through systems in public or community ownership, ensuring the protection and restoration of the ecological status of water bodies," as called for in the motion before the House. Táimid ag cosaint uisce agus comhshaol na hÉireann do dhaoine. Gabhaim buíochas leis na Seanadóirí go léir.