The president of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, has described the EPA Report on Urban Waste Treatment in 2023 citing water pollution incidents involving Uisce Eireann as more evidence of what he called the State’s ‘jaw-dropping’ double standards on its own much-trumpeted drive to improve national water quality.
As an example, Mr Drennan referred to an incident apparently noted in the EPA Report that no less than five million litres of raw sewage was pumped into the river in Cavan town through a malfunction in a treatment plant. The malfunction went apparently unnoticed for a whole week and Mr Drennan noted that the EPA itself had noted that the timeline under which Uisce Eireann was operating in terms of upgrading public wastewater treatment facilities was putting public health at risk.
The ICMSA president said that urban waste water is a major source of pollution and farmers believe that a brazen double standards are applying on water quality. In support, he referenced the massive fish kill in North Cork just last June as a result of a serious chemical discharge from a water treatment plant at Freemount in North Cork.
Mr Drennan said that the ‘Shure These Things Happen’ casual attitude adopted by both Uisce Eireann and the Government contrasted very starkly with the energetic pursuit of individual farmers over breaches – whether inadvertent or not – of Nitrates regulations and other rules around stocking densities deemed to have consequences for water quality.
A policy of pursuit that had farmers being threatened with being put out of business if water quality doesn’t improve. In those cases, noted the ICMSA President, action and censure followed very swiftly with personal consequences for the farmer.
No farmer in Ireland, he noted, would ever be allowed to attribute his or her actions to a vague ‘systems failure’ nor would they be allowed a timeline of years – decades even – to make good and fix a malfunctioning system or piece of equipment.
Mr Drennan said that not alone were Uisce Eireann not bothered by the State for these repeated breaches of the rules that everyone else – on pain of prosecution and fines – were expected to follow. But just last month, we learned that bonus payments to Uisce Eireann’s staff increased by 17% to €10.5 million with the average bonus amounting to €6,500 per employee.
The ICMSA president said that the ‘questionable’ image of a State-owned water utility paying its employees ‘hefty’ bonuses when the company itself seemed to breach State regulations around water quality while pursuing farmers and relentlessly piling up regulations around farms and waterways, would not be lost on anyone.
“This is just the latest in a long line of jaw-dropping incidents and malfunctions and, bluntly, at this stage that record and attitude is undermining the national drive towards better water quality. It’s just not good enough and either Usice Eireann and other State outfits are told that they have to meet the same standards and rules as the rest of us – or the rest of us are given the kind of ‘pass’ and latitude and timeline that Uisce Eireann and the State seems to want for itself. It’s one or the other,” concluded Mr Drennan.
