Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 22 Nov 2007

Vol. 187 No. 21

Water and Sewerage Schemes.

Senator Cecilia Keaveney

I thank the Chair for allowing me to raise the need for the group sewerage scheme grant to be raised to the same level as the group water scheme. It might not be directly relevant to the Minister for Social and Family Affairs but I welcome him to the House to answer my query.

We must ask what aspirations we have for the future of the environment. My home town does not have a sewerage scheme so the sewage runs raw into the River Foyle. We battled for nearly 30 years for a tertiary treatment plant that could improve the situation but, further up the Foyle, the major scheme there is already part of the programme. The difficulty lies in ensuring that An Bord Pleanála gets what it needs to approve the scheme.

Our approach to the large schemes, however, is not mirrored by the situation with smaller schemes. At one time, a number of people came to me looking for a group sewerage scheme closer to Muff, further up the Foyle. The people of Ture worked hard to put together a scheme but when they put together the figures, it turned out that they had mistakenly been looking at those for a group water scheme and, given the levels of grant subventions for group sewerage schemes, it was not practical. I have raised this before and was told there is no demand for the scheme so there is no point in putting it together. It is a chicken and egg situation, however, because if it is not viable in view of the level of grant, there will be no demand.

Do we want to create such a demand? Yes, on the basis that because there are so many rural dwellings and one-off houses, there are septic tanks all over the country. European directives are changing the monitoring, cleaning and evaluation process for septic tanks so it makes economic and environmental sense to encourage people into the group sewerage scheme and away from the septic tanks and puriflow systems. There has been a review of group sewerage schemes but instead of carrying out pilot projects, we should take a further step and ensure the group sewerage scheme grant is increased to the same level as the group water scheme. We will then give an indication at individual level that we want to improve the environment.

A lot of voluntary effort goes into the planning for group schemes — the Ture group spent a long time working on the scheme. Currently, however, the group sewerage scheme allows for 75% of the cost up to a value of €2,031, compared to 85% of the cost up to a value of €7,619 for a group water scheme if 90% of people in the area support it, a significant difference. The group sewerage scheme support in CLÁR areas is better but 100% of people must want to join and, in reality, very few places exist where 100% of people will sign up to anything. Even the 100% versus 90% in non-CLÁR group water scheme areas makes a difference.

I raise the group sewerage scheme today because I am also worried about bigger schemes. Carndonagh is one of the few places that has a good sewerage scheme on the Inishowen peninsula. There were lengthy delays with the Malin sewerage scheme when it should have been an extension of Carndonagh. As a result, it fell under the new criterion whereby the local authority had to pay a considerable amount to the scheme. In areas like mine, there has been little investment in business so our ability to generate co-financing for such basic infrastructure is curtailed, particularly when the price of new sewerage schemes is so high.

Minister for Social and Family Affairs (Deputy Martin Cullen)

I would like to thank Senator Keaveney for raising this important issue. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government regrets that he is unable to be here in person due to another commitment. He has asked me to respond to the motion on his behalf.

Group sewerage schemes, though much less numerous than group water schemes, have provided communities with the opportunity of connecting to public sewerage networks through communal sewage collection systems that are, in turn, connected to local authority sewers. There is a continuing interest in forming new group sewerage schemes. This interest comes mainly from clusters of houses currently dependent on septic tanks and situated close to towns or villages with public sewerage services. In some cases, difficulties with the disposal of septic tank effluent are being experienced by septic tank owners, particularly in sensitive areas or where there are poor ground conditions.

Small village communities have also expressed interest in setting up group sewerage schemes where there are no public sewerage services available. However, few, if any, village sewerage systems have been provided through group sewerage schemes, mainly due to difficulties associated with the location, siting, ownership and management of communal wastewater treatment systems. Operating and maintaining wastewater treatment infrastructure is intrinsically more problematic than water treatment. Operational failure could result in serious public health or environmental consequences and there is the ongoing issue of disposing of treated effluent and the sludge from the treatment process.

The current grant available to householders under the group sewerage programme is €2,031.58 per house, or 75% of cost, whichever is the lesser. The corresponding grant for group water schemes is €6,475.66. There is, however, positive news. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is at present funding a pilot wastewater collection and treatment project for rural villages, which was proposed by the national rural water monitoring committee, to test a range of new, small-scale wastewater collection and treatment systems under Irish conditions. The objective of the pilot programme is to explore new, cost effective ways of collecting wastewater from houses in rural communities and to evaluate new approaches to meeting their wastewater treatment needs.

This pilot project has pioneered the use of septic tank effluent drainage systems, commonly referred to as STEDS. Under this approach, existing septic tanks are retained on-site with the effluent being collected through a special filter to be drained via a small diameter pipe to a small package treatment system. It is hoped that this alternative collection and treatment system will prove appropriate for use in small rural communities with low population density and site specific environmental conditions such as shallow bedrock, high ground-water conditions and limited effluent discharge locations.

Construction work on the pilot projects is now complete and they are undergoing commissioning. Monitoring of the performance of the new infrastructure has commenced and some preliminary results will be available to the national rural water monitoring committee shortly. The lessons learned with regard to the technologies and costs associated with both the treatment and collection element of the pilot programme will inform policy and determine the potential role for group sewerage schemes in the provision of wastewater collection systems.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has asked the national rural water monitoring committee to report to him on the results from the pilot projects, including its recommendations on the future role of the group sewerage schemes in the provision of wastewater collection systems, as soon as possible. The Minister is committed to reviewing the level of grant aid for group sewerage schemes when this report and the recommendations of the national rural water monitoring committee become available and this will happen in the short rather than the long-term. I will also advise the Minister of the discussions here as part of the review process.