In this Bill which has been before the House for some hours now, an effort has been made by Deputy Belton and the Fine Gael Deputies associated with him to direct public attention, if direction is needed, to a problem which is now regarded as a very serious one. There has been growing concern in recent years over the gradual and apparently inevitable destruction of the natural amenities of our country. This growing awareness of what is happening is probably in accord with a consciousness which also exists in many other countries. It is timely that we should express concern now because we still have time to avoid many of the consequences that pollution has brought to the Continent and other parts of the world.
Pollution is a term which can have many connotations. When we speak of conservation as an antedote to pollution we ought to mean the keeping of our land, air, water and our wild life in a state of preservation. This Bill does not seek to deal with the general problem of pollution or generally to demand conservation. It deals with a limited area of water pollution. In that respect the point has already been made, and it is no harm to make it again, that putting various polluting materials into water has been recognised as a social wrong for many years. It first became a matter for legislation when what was being done in the way of pollution interfered with the private fishing rights which flourished so extensively at the end of the last century. There have also been instances in our internal administration and our legislation where the general social harm being done by pollution has been recognised.
Our trouble in relation to the present state of the law and our present administrative code is that there are too many bodies that have a limited responsibility in this respect. The various boards of conservators have a responsibility in relation to rivers and lakes within their districts. Local authorities also have responsibility. There are any number of authorities that have some responsibility for certain parts of the fresh waters within our territory. That certainly has not meant a move towards uniform control or the bringing about of any uniform policy to deal with pollution. In our statute law and in the regulations which apply there is a tremendous scattering of statutory provisions and a general confusion as to what the law is or ought to be.
At the moment there is nothing to prevent a local authority polluting a lake which it controls and owns by direct sewage outflow into that lake. Indeed, many local authorities have purchased rights to do that in many of the small lakes and water areas throughout the country. That is apparently regarded as a tolerable thing to do if private rights are not interfered with. Of course, that kind of disposal of town or urban sewage is in fact the destruction of an amenity which exists in the local authority area even if private rights are not being interfered with.
The introduction of this Bill is to direct attention to this problem, but generally speaking the purpose of the Bill is to start a thinking in this House which will lead to some national policy with regard to the preservation of unpolluted water, both fresh water and in the seas contiguous to our country. I believe this is essential because, if we permit the situation to be as it has been, not only will we gradually destroy the natural amenities available to our own community, but it will have a very drastic effect on this country in regard to its tourist attractions. We will certainly affect the health and well-being of our own people.
We suggest that this problem is serious, that it has grown in seriousness in recent years and that it is urgent now that some action be taken. This Bill proposes that there shall be, in accordance with its terms, responsibility placed on one single authority, the Minister for Local Government. He will have the responsibility of seeing, as a long-term objective, that our inland waters, and the seas that wash our shores, will have a standard of purity which he, after advice and having regard to local circumstances, will declare. It is clear that there must be a standard. Reference has been made to the Royal Commission standards at the end of the last century. We have had a situation over the years in which those standards were observed in relation to moving waters. I just cannot recall whether Royal Commission standards dealt with lakes and still waters, but certainly we have the problem of polluted rivers and polluted lakes, and we ought to be in a position to declare in relation to any particular group of waters in any country what a proper standard should be.
Presumably such a standard would have regard to the degree of use being made of the waters which cannot be avoided and which may be in part traditional, and maybe in relation to certain waters, a standard lower than in other parts of the country might be declared and adopted. Certainly if this approach commends itself to the House I would hope that in the areas in the country—thank goodness they are still many and diverse—in which pollution has not come about, the standard of purity declared for those waters would be as high as possible.
The idea, in any event, is that the Minister would have the responsibility to declare a standard or standards of purity, and that, having declared a standard of purity for the different waters that we control, he and his Department would under, presumably, a chain of command, see that this standard is achieved or preserved. If the particular waters have a degree of pollution which is higher than the standard declared by the Minister, then that is a situation which requires remedial action. It will have to be observed if the Minister merely declares an existing standard of purity in any waters to be tolerable.
The point is that under this proposal there will emanate an active policy from the Minister's Department in relation to the different counties, regions and local authority areas throughout the country in order to ensure that this problem is contained, dealt with and solved. These proposals should commend themselves to Deputies on all sides of the House. No matter what constituency we represent, each one of us, unfortunately, hears from time to time of cases of pollution, destruction of fish life, the disappearance of local amenities, all these things which makes one sad for our country and for the environment in which we live.
It is of the utmost importance that this kind of problem should be approached with goodwill and tolerance by Deputies on all sides of the House. I should not like to feel that the Minister or any Deputies who normally support the Minister in this House would become complacent in relation to the powers of the legal provisions which are there now. Certainly any expression of complacency would be utterly unjustified.
I can well understand the Minister or other Deputies saying: "The proposal in this Bill is not sound, is imperfect or has a whole lot of loopholes in it." This Bill is merely offered as the collective work of a number of Deputies from this side of the House. We do not for a moment suggest that it is the only way to deal with this common problem. However, I would hope, in any event, that the existence of the problem would be recognised by all Deputies and that the need for action, for reform in our law, for the declaration of some kind of policy, the development of appropriate machinery, would be accepted, and that, if it is accepted, if this measure does not commend itself, some alternative proposal will come before us.
We shall be judged in our time not merely by the manner in which we face up to the social problems of our day, to the economic or political problems which face us, but also by the manner in which we have sought to preserve the environment and our particular surroundings. It would be a desperate and a very sad thing if by inaction, lethargy, complacency or whatever it may be, we destroyed for those to come after us the amenities which are found so generously in this country. That is the purpose of the Bill. I hope that the debate which we have had up to this, which has been a good debate conducted on a very high level, will continue and that from the introduction of this Bill and the debate upon its proposals we shall have evidence that we are taking steps towards dealing with this problem.