Wastewater infrastructure delays
Deputy O’Hara raised delayed wastewater upgrades affecting housing delivery in Mountbellew, Craughwell and Clarinbridge. The Minister said the Government is accelerating water infrastructure through record Irish Water funding and by cutting planning and process delays.
On wastewater infrastructure, planning permission has been granted for in excess of 60 houses at different sites in Mountbellew on the basis of the condition that they cannot be occupied until they are connected to the upgraded Mountbellew wastewater treatment plant. There is still no clarity on when construction on the plant will begin. In Craughwell and Clarinbridge, funding was announced for wastewater upgrades three years ago, but there has been no progress on these projects. As the Minister knows, we have a serious barrier to delivery of that infrastructure because the Department has told Galway County Council that it is expected to make a co-funding contribution of at least €2 million towards those projects. This is money that the council has not budgeted for. I have raised this matter with the Minister a number of times. It needs to be addressed. There are many more towns and villages I could mention where we do not have capacity and where there are no plans for investment. What is the Government going to do to accelerate delivery of this infrastructure and ensure that badly needed homes can be built?
Comment on this
There are two primary ways in which we are trying to accelerate the development of water infrastructure. The first is to fully fund Irish Water over the next five years by providing it with €12 billion. This is a record level of investment to unlock and deliver a lot of the wastewater treatment plants that have been on lists for too many years. The second way is to cut a lot of the process out of Irish Water's delivery system prior to construction, which we are doing, and out of many of the infrastructure reforms we are advancing. The Deputy raised this with me at the infrastructure committee. I wrote to the committee in recent days, but I do not know if it has received my letter. The letter makes specific reference to Clarinbridge, a matter to which the Deputy has referred previously. I will ask Irish Water to respond to him on the situation in Mountbellew. We will try to organise that.