The decision by the European Court of Justice that Ireland has failed to meet it’s obligations under the Urban Waste Water Directive highlighted the deficiencies of Government policy which resulted in the pollution of surface waters throughout Ireland.

This was stated by Independent MEP Marian Harkin when she described as appalling the record of the Department of the Environment in failing to protect the quality of Ireland’s surface waters.

“It is not just urban systems like Letterkenny and Sligo which fail to meet EU requirements but the many other treatment systems throughout the country which to date have not come under the scrutiny of the EU”, she said.

Existing sewerage plant upgrades and planned new projects were being stymied by the combination of poor planning and what seemed to be a deliberate refusal to provide the necessary personnel or processing mechanism to upgrade and develop new systems.

“Any objective analysis of the cryptosporidium problem which forced the people of Galway to boil water for lengthy periods would indicate the dead-hand of the Department of the Environment in failing to approve the resources necessary to ensure the quality of drinking water while similar situations pertain in other parts of the country in relation to discharges to rivers and seas”, she said.

Donegal County Council which was seeking to develop a new sewerage system in Moville was proposing a project which would unnecessarily harm marine life and represented a health hazard to the community, she said.  This was being done through a fast track process and the justification was that it would cost less than discharging to the open sea, she said.

Following a decade in which unprecedented resources were available to the State there had been gross mismanagement of Ireland’s waste water investment programme which had left many communities with water that was undrinkable and facilities incapable of meeting EU requirements, she said.

“The main culprits are the Department of the Environment which has consistently been slow to approve projects, as a result of its staffing policies, and the Government as a whole whose staff embargo policy ensured that local authorities had difficulty in devising and implementing water treatment improvements in new projects”, Marian Harkin MEP said.

She called for an immediate review of current policies and for a commitment by Government that during the present National Development Plan the necessary policies would be implemented to ensure that Ireland complied in every respect with all EU water and waste water directives.  This should include the commitment in the Programme for Government for the upgrading of septic tanks.