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Cork County Council began their inspections of 99 septic tanks across Cork at the start of December.
Earlier this year the European Commission's environment section confirmed that the Government had paid a lump sum fine of €2m plus €648,000 in daily penalties. It had been fined €12,000 per day from December 2012 when the European Court of Justice ruled Ireland had failed to protect water sources in contravention of EU rules.
Director of Services, Sharon Corcoran told the councillors at last month's Northern Committee meeting in Mallow that they will be inspecting 99 septic tanks out of the 58,000 registered across the county and she explained that the tanks to be inspected 'will be chosen at random'.
She added that while there will be a grant to assist people who need to make improvements to their tank, the council do not yet have details of this, as she explained that they want to wait and see what the level of compliance is like first.
Cllr Frank O'Flynn questioned why the first round of inspections was to take place in December, when rainfall would be at its heaviest, but Sharon said that they only have until June 2014 to complete the inspections and once the staff were trained, they need to start as soon as they can.
In response to questions from Cllr O'Flynn about how much notice householders will get about an inspection, Sharon said that they will get ten working days notice and are entitled to be present during the inspection and afterwards, they will get an advisory notice about the details of the inspection and whether or not any modifications or improvements need to be made.
She added that if changes need to be made to a tank, it is at this point that people will be informed about the grant aid options and said they will try to make the inspections 'customer friendly' and 'won't be coming down with a sledge hammer'.
Due to the embargo on recruitment, inspectors were not recruited for these jobs, but instead four staff members from agriculture were trained for the work and so, she said that the agricultural programme will be reduced to some extent, until this has been rolled out.
Cllr Gerard Murphy also made the point that people with farms would have a lot of inspectors coming out for different things and he recommended that a centralised approach be taken on - something Sharon said she will look into.
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