Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 27 Feb 2001

Vol. 531 No. 3

Written Answers. - Water and Sewerage Schemes.

John McGuinness

Ceist:

277 Mr. McGuinness asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government if he will fund a sewerage system for Tullaroan village, County Kilkenny; and if he will expand the existing scheme to give a greater grant per household to enable the scheme to go ahead based on the need and cost of the scheme. [5442/01]

Minister for the Environment and Local Government (Mr. Dempsey):

Under the devolved rural water programme, it is a matter for county councils to determine the projects for which capital grant assistance is given from their annual block grant allocations. The block grants for the current year were notified to local authorities by my Department earlier this month.

Last year I asked the national rural water monitoring committee to furnish proposals for meeting the waste water collection and treatment needs of small rural communities. The committee's report, which was presented to me earlier this month, recommends a pilot programme to test a range of new small scale collection and treatment systems based on design, build, operate, DBO, procurement by local authorities. Subject to a satisfactory outcome to the pilot testing, the report envisages a potential role for group sewerage schemes in the collection of domestic waste water from households outside the immediate catchment of new treatment systems. Consequently, any such developments in relation to group sewerage schemes and any review of the associated grants must await the results of the pilot study.