All sectors must play their part in improving water quality – Jackie Cahill TD

The Fianna Fáil TD for Tipperary and Chairperson of the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee, Jackie Cahill has today stated that all sectors in Ireland must play their part in improving water quality across the island and that the blame can no longer be laid solely at the feet of farmers.

Deputy Cahill was speaking following the publication of an EPA report this week which stated that the equivalent of three Olympic swimming pools worth of sewage was being pumped into our national waterways daily.

Speaking on this today, Deputy Cahill said: “The report published by the EPA this week stating that the amount of raw sewage entering Ireland’s waterways could fill three Olympic sized swimming pools daily is highly concerning. Both the health and environmental impacts of this disastrous situation could be damaging in the extreme.

“I recently received a number of Parliamentary Question responses that stated that 61 settlements and villages in Tipperary alone have no wastewater treatment plants. It does not take much imagination to envisage where the raw sewage is ending up and there seems to be little urgency on the part of Uisce Éireann in tackling this issue.

“Two major towns in North Tipperary – Thurles and Nenagh – both have mixed sewer systems, meaning that both wastewater and stormwater are mixing in the treatment plants that are completely inadequate to deal with the quantities flowing into them in both towns.

Deputy Cahill continued to state that the EPA report raises serious concerns about the impact on human health from having raw sewage flowing into local waterways, he said: “It is clear that huge investment is needed in our wastewater treatment plants nationally, and this is needed immediately.

“It is ironic that when water quality deteriorates in Ireland, the finger is immediately pointed solely at farmers with livestock, even when we are presented with reports as shocking as the one released this week by the EPA. The only people to get penalised as a result of recent EPA reports are farmers in derogation and this is putting huge pressure on these farms and threatening their viability.

“Until all sectors play their part in preventing the pollution of our waterways, it is not right that one group would be signalled out to carry the financial burden, when they are clearly not at fault for the vast quantities of raw sewage going into our water system.

“We all want our water quality to improve and Uisce Éireann need to pull up their socks and tackle this issue with a major sense of urgency. We have environmental experts in this country maintaining that livestock has a very small role to play in that battle but farmers will not be found wanting in that regard.

"We only have to look to County Leitrim to prove this point, where there is very little livestock farming, and yet it is marked in the ‘red zone’ for farming nitrates. This makes absolutely no sense and in my view it demonstrates that livestock farming is not the major problem here.

“I am certain that farmers will play our part, but it is time for the major pollution from our sewage systems to be tackled and for Uisce Éireann to get to work immediately.”