I welcome the Minister to the House. The reason I raise this matter is that to my absolute astonishment I received a representation from someone who sails in and out of Arklow on a regular basis and who has for many years been telling me that he is disgusted that the Avoca river is polluted by raw sewage. My initial inquiry suggested this was a problem which would be resolved very quickly and that it was not as bad as either I or he had thought. However, I found to my astonishment that there is no sewage treatment available at all in Arklow. All sewage in Arklow is raw, an astonishing fact in this day and age in a town the size of Arklow. It is more astonishing that we should expect tourists to be attracted to and sail into an area of this sort when raw sewage is a serious problem which has not been tackled.
I bring this to the attention of the Minister because I am well aware that there have been bureaucratic problems in establishing a sewage treatment plant. However, it is a clear case of the planning procedures being inadequate when sewage treatment cannot be provided because of what the Minister will undoubtedly tell us is a problem with planning procedures.
Six years ago an application was made to the county council to build a plant in Seabank. Permission was granted in 1993 – I am open to correction – by Wicklow County Council. This was appealed by objectors to An Bord Pleanála, as happens in many cases of this sort. In a full oral hearing permission was granted by An Bord Pleanála. For some reason, which I hope the Minister will explain, the scheme was not funded by the Department of the Environment and Local Government within the life of the planning permission. I do not know why this is so and I am interested to hear the reason from the Minister. Neither did the Cohesion Funding come from Europe. Therefore, there was a delay in funding from Europe and the Department in 1993. This was one of the reasons why the planning permission expired in February 1999. It is extraordinary.
New planning permission was granted in July this year. This was again appealed by the objectors in August 1999 to An Bord Pleanála and we are waiting the result of that process. In the meantime I gather that the objectors have taken two actions to the High Court, and this is the complication. I am sure the Minister will be familiar with this by the time he has read his speech. One action is for a judicial review to quash the planning permission granted by Wicklow County Council. The other action, which makes the issue even more complicated, is to prevent An Bord Pleanála from hearing the appeal until the judicial review has been decided.
We have, therefore, an extraordinary situation with a judicial review, delays, High Court actions, ministerial inaction and lack of funding which has resulted in the Avoca river being a cesspool. The result is that people from overseas visit Arklow and never return and that the development of the entire town is hindered. I do not wish to put too fine a tooth on it, but the crude sewage which results every time a person flushes their lavatory in Arklow goes into the river and then the sea. If this is not a recipe for driving people out of a town this size, I do not know what is.
I do not want to hear the Minister reply, as officials often do in documents written by them, that nothing can be done because of the bureaucratic procedures. What is necessary is a change in the planning laws, because we are tired of hearing Ministers, county councils and others saying there is nothing they can do. The Minister is part of the Government and what I want to hear is not an explanation of the history of the issue, which I have outlined to save him the trouble, but a declaration of intent as to what he will do so this particular incident is not repeated elsewhere on the coast of Ireland.
