Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-24
============================================================

Erin McGreehan (FF), Louth

I ask that the Cabinet consider expanding eligibility for the septic tank grant scheme so that every household with a defective system can access support regardless of geography. If we do not take that step, we are asking people to protect water quality without giving them the means to do so. There are close to 500,000 septic tanks in use across the State. The recent grant of €12,000 is welcome but the scheme remains far too narrowly focused. Most of the time, people fall outside the criteria. In practice, households can only access support if they fail an inspection or fall within specific priority areas. If we are really serious about protecting water quality, we cannot rely on this reactive scheme. We want to be proactive. We need to take a preventative approach that supports homeowners before pollution occurs.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-24