Water: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Pa Daly (SF), Kerry

The first thing I wish to speak about are the ancient wastewater systems in parts of County Kerry. I could list six or seven villages, such as Ballyduff, Fenit, Glenbeigh, Kilcummin, Abbeydorney and Castlegregory in particular, where, in effect, although some progress has been made in Kilcummin, we have a hole in the ground.
In Castlegregory, it is within 40 yd of a school building. In Fenit and Castlegregory, it is within 100 yd or so of a Blue Flag beach. The wastewater from those villages is pouring out into a hole. There is an overflow tank dug into the ground which has been there for decades. I do not see anything in the national development plan. I do not see anything in any of the programmes that is going to address the needs of the places like Ballyduff and Duagh, where this system has to be upgraded in a hurry.
It is also affecting the rights of people to build and construct housing and be close to their own villages. Over the past 20 or 25 years in particular, there has been an emphasis from planners to make it more difficult to live in one-off houses and to cluster them in villages. In places like Fenit and Abbeydorney, you cannot build more than two houses together because the wastewater treatment system is not even in place. There have been proposals to construct facilities which would benefit the community in those places but they have not been able to proceed with them because the infrastructure is not there to take any additional wastewater. That is something that needs to be addressed.
I also want to address the Minister about water quality in the rivers, particularly in the catchment area or the upriver of the Feale. We all saw what happened with the flood just before the last general election. There is a problem in the Smearlagh and Awbeg Rivers because there have been a lot of plantations of forestry with vertical drainage. After a flood, it used to take two to three days to fill up, and the anglers would look for that. Now it is two to three hours. It is coming down in a flood and is scouring the banks. We saw the catastrophic effects near the town of Listowel in Killacrim after the flood 16 months ago. That is something which has not been taken into account at all in the OPW's analysis of what happened. It must be looked at. Not only is it affecting those communities but it is wiping out stocks of brown trout and salmon in those tributaries. I am asking the Minister to have a look at that in the programmes he is announcing.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21