A number of amendments, mainly of a drafting nature, were made to the Bill in the course of its passage through the Dáil and I will comment briefly on each of them.
Amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 10 on the list which has been circulated are similar. They provide for updating of the collective citation of the Fisheries Acts in sections 1 and 3 of the Bill which was necessitated by the enactment of the Fisheries (Amendment) Act, 1976, which became law following the passing of this Bill by the Seanad.
Amendments Nos. 3, 5 and 30 are related. Amendment No. 3 amends the definition of "local authority" in section 1 to include the Corporation of Dún Laoghaire with the corporations of the county boroughs and councils of the counties in the definition for the purposes of this Bill. Amendments Nos. 5 and 30 are consequential on amendment No. 3. Amendment No. 5 applies the provisions of the County Management Acts relating to the performance of "reserved functions" by Dún Laoghaire Corporation to the reserved function of making water quality management plans under section 15 of this Bill, and amendment No. 30 provides that the expenses of Dublin county council under this Bill will be charged on the county exclusive of the borough of Dún Laoghaire.
Amendments Nos. 4 and 30 are related. As the term "monitoring", which is used in sections 4, 16 and 22 of the Bill, is open to a number of possible interpretations, it was considered desirable to define it for the purposes of the Bill. The definition provided for in amendment No. 4 includes the various activities, such as inspection, measurement, sampling and analysis, coming within the meaning of the term as used in the Bill. Amendment No. 23 is a minor drafting amendment which is consequential on amendment No. 4.
Amendment No. 6 inserts a new subsection—subsection (8)—in section 2 of the Bill requiring the Water Pollution Advisory Council to make a report to the Minister each year of their activities in the preceding year and requires the Minister to cause copies of the report to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas.
Amendments Nos. 7, 11, 12, 15, 16 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 26, 27, 28 and 29 are related. They are purely drafting amendments necessitated by the recent setting up of a separate Department of Fisheries. They provide for the substitution of "Minister for Fisheries" for "Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries" wherever the latter term appears in the Bill.
With regard to amendment No. 8, the Bill as passed by the Seanad provided, by virtue of section 3 (5) (a), that the general prohibition in section 3 on the entry of polluting matter to waters would not apply to trade or sewage effluents. The reason for this was that section 4, which sets up a licensing system, deals with the control of such effluents. Section 4 (10), however, allows for exemption of certain classes of licensable effluents. The classes of effluent which are likely to be considered for exemption by regulations under subsection (10) of section 4 are effluents which, in the generality of cases, are unlikely to cause pollution problems—for example, discharges from septic tanks serving individual houses—and may not warrant the inconvenience and administrative cost of licensing. Any effluent so exempted would, under the Bill as passed by the Seanad, be subject neither to the licensing provisions of section 4 nor the general prohibition in section 3. While, as I have said, the effluents concerned pose little or no pollution threat, it was nevertheless considered desirable to amend section 3 (5) (a) to provide that any effluent exempted from the licensing requirements of section 4 by regulations made under subsection (10) of that section would be brought within the scope of the general prohibition in section 3, unless it complied with any relevant standard which may be prescribed under section 26. Amendment No. 8 makes this change. Amendment No. 9 covers a minor drafting point. It substitutes the word "section" for "sections" in section 3 (5) (c).
Business suspended at 3.40 p.m. and resumed at 4 p.m.