Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have seen the recent Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, report on septic tanks, pollution of lakes and so on. I think there is a grant of €5,000 available from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage for upgrading septic tanks. That is inadequate. I call on the Leader to contact the Minister. It is very hard to get a contractor to do a small job installing a new percolation system or whatever. They are quite costly as well. That grant needs to be upgraded. I also ask that we look at the whole area of communal schemes. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we could have innovative systems where a number of houses could come together. We should discuss the whole area of extensions to small sewerage schemes and communal schemes. Since Irish Water has been made a separate business, I am not so sure how small schemes are progressed from local authorities up to Irish Water as regards responsibility for putting water and sewerage systems in place. If an extension is required to a small rural scheme or a new rural scheme is needed in its own right, how does that progress now so that it gets on the radar of Irish Water? Before this, local authority members proposed a scheme at local authority level and asked the management of the local authority to investigate a scheme. I am not sure how it works now. I do not think the local authority members know how it works. I do not think the Government knows how it works either. Is it entirely left to Irish Water? Have the local authorities a function? This is an area we could have a debate on. I ask the Leader to arrange a debate in this area and that she might contact the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in regard to the grant for the improvement of septic tanks.