Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as ucht teacht isteach arís. Tá sé an-ghnóthach an tseachtain seo. We will have to make the Minister of State an honorary member of the Seanad. He is great for coming in. To more serious matters, we all heard about Kilkee last week. It is a very famous beach and the reason is that it is a beautiful and safe bay. Unfortunately, Kilkee has had major issues for years. This is the third year in a row that the beach has been closed. I have said before that we have a water emergency, and this is another big example of it. Kilkee was promised a water treatment facility many years ago, which was to be completed by the end of last year. Now it is being said it will not be completed until 2024 or 2025. People want to know what is happening and when it is happening. I do not care whose fault it is. At this stage, nobody cares. We just want the solutions.

A very worrying issue that keeps coming up, and it also came up in Lahinch previously, is e.coli infection of younger bathers and more vulnerable bathers. Families have contacted me. In one case, a child got e.coli and gave it to his two week old brother who ended up in hospital. Are we waiting for the Government to get sued in the courts? Several families have contacted me about this issue.

At present, there is no treatment plant in Kilkee. There is a unit with a screen but that is it. The water is pumped out over the cliff. It is not fit for purpose anyway. Even on a good day, it is not good enough. On a bad day, we all see what happens. People blame climate change but there are many elements to this. There is no one simple solution because there are so many elements. We have heavier rainfall now. Previously, storm drains fed into the sewerage treatment system or the septic tank or whatever was holding it. This worked in the past but now we have different types of rain and heavier rainfall. This means the raw sewerage and storm drain water all get mixed up. Sometimes the system backs up because it cannot cope. This happens all over the country, as we know from the Environmental Protection Agency's results.

Two weeks ago, burst water mains resulted in the shutdown of the beach, which is devastating for all of the businesses that have finally reopened.Meanwhile, it could be another four years before Kilkee gets a treatment plant.

A number of factors are at play and, unfortunately, a treatment plant will not take care of all of them. The Victoria stream, which has run-off from the catchment area, must be dammed every year. That stream sometimes bring contamination to the bathing areas. Water from the dammed stream is then fed into a pump station for pumping to the outfall at the cliffs. There is also the Atlantic stream on the east side of the beach. That is not pumped out at all and goes straight into the bay. That could also bring about contamination.

We have been saying this for a long time. The Minister of State, who is a member of the Green Party, realises that water was a major issue for us when the programme for Government was being negotiated, particularly in the context of proper investment in water, looking at water quality and catchment-based solutions. There can be many of these, and they can include soft engineering as well as hard engineering. We need catchment-based solutions because septic tanks and water treatments will not solve all the problems. There are myriad issues and unless we see water as an emergency issue, we will not solve the problem.