Water Policy: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2022-11-09
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Ciarán Cannon (FG), Galway East

I thank the Minister of State for being here to listen to our ambitions for the development of wastewater infrastructure throughout the country and water infrastructure in general. We need to be ambitious in how we seek to empower our towns and villages to grow and develop and become attractive places within which to live and work.
We are still dealing with a legacy of a crash that left many homeowners in towns and villages high and dry almost a decade ago. I am sure the Minister of State and many others have been dealing with that legacy and trying to support homeowners who are in estates that are serviced by private wastewater treatment facilities. It is the policy of Galway County Council, and that of many other local authorities, not to take these private wastewater treatment facilities in charge, many of which are now malfunctioning a decade later. Homeowners in these estates, some of which are quite large in towns and villages across County Galway, are left carrying the can. We need to look at mechanisms, some of which were introduced five to six years ago, as to how these issues could be addressed. They are not working. Many homeowners across Ireland are left carrying the can of this legacy at a huge cost. Some of the treatment facilities are simply not working and the Minister of State knows the outcome of that, which I do not have to explain to him. We need to concentrate on supporting homeowners to address these legacy issues in whatever way we can. Irish Water has a significant role to play in that regard, as do our local authorities.
Another issue, which is welcome in one sense, is the demographic challenge of a growing population. Our population has reached 5 million and is predicted to reach many more millions in the decades to come. Our national planning policy is beginning to dictate, from which there are many positives arising, that the majority of our new housing developments should be built in our towns and villages within our settlement centres. The majority of these settlement centres are not set up to accommodate that kind of development. Craughwell is one village in my locality. Its population has doubled in the past decade and the same is expected to happen in the next decade. It is an incredibly attractive place to live and has many fine sports and educational facilities. It is a village close to Galway city. Again, it does not have a wastewater facility. When I inquired with Irish Water several months ago as to what its plans were for the development of a wastewater facility in Craughwell, a burgeoning town, I was told it neither had the remit nor the funds to do so. Craughwell is a perfect example of what needs to be done in the future. Irish Water needs to become far more proactive in providing wastewater treatment facilities to facilitate our towns and villages in the future.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-11-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:15+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-11-09