Alissa MacMillan
Q: I heard Mitchelstown didn’t fare so well in a recent report about wastewater treatment. How bad is it and how can it be fixed?
A: You heard right. Last week’s report from the Environmental Protection Agency, ‘Urban Wastewater Treatment in 2025,’ indeed points to Mitchelstown, along with Rathcormac, as 2 of 13 large urban areas across the country which failed to meet EU treatment standards.
The report was about wastewater, or sewage, the water from our sinks, toilets, showers, and elsewhere, that finds its way into pipes and sewers and is treated and sent back into rivers, estuaries, lakes, and coastal waters. Wastewater is managed by Uisce Éireann, and its management is essential to protect the environment and prevent pollution.
Mitchelstown and Rathcormac are not alone, the report painting a varied picture of wastewater treatment in Ireland, with some recent improvements and some new weaknesses across the country. The key finding is that 55% of licensed treatment plants don’t meet the standards set by the EPA to protect the environment. As noted in the report, and as EPA inspector David Shannon explains, this is because of anything from short-duration problems to longer term, more persistent ones.
About half of the causes of these failures were because of “deficient treatment infrastructure,” the other half from “inadequate operation and maintenance of treatment plants.” Of the half that are thanks to poor management of existent treatment plants, “this could and should be addressed and can be implemented straightaway, without the need for significant capital investment,” Shannon explains. “When you look at the problems and look across the country, operations and maintenance can be sorted out quickly enough.”
But it does require consistent upkeep. “It’s a bit like servicing your car, if you don’t service it, it will breakdown in the middle of nowhere,” he says. With a treatment plant, “maybe pumps don’t work, if you improve operations and maintenance, you get immediate improvement; if you give staff on site good training and support, if something goes wrong, you have the support to get these things fixed.”
STRUGGLING TO GET ‘A PASS’
As for the problems caused by older treatment sites, these require more significant investment and upgrade to meet modern standards. But they are quite serious. “It includes 11 towns and villages still discharging raw sewage every day” because they lack wastewater treatment plants, Shannon says.
Not as bad as that, towns like Mitchelstown and Rathcormac do still have a long way to go, as the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment directive is a basic urban standard set 35 years ago, which they are still not meeting. Shannon explains that the EPA licences much stricter limits, to do with water quality and receiving water, but the directive which Mitchelstown and Rathcormac failed to meet is “a real pass grade,” so an even more basic standard across Europe. In other words, Mitchelstown and Rathcormac didn’t even meet the basic EU standards, let alone the more stringent EPA standards that they must meet to protect the environment and prevent pollution.
For Rathcormac, about a third of the samples failed in 2025, Shannon says, so it wasn’t just a once-off result. And while they didn’t perform well in 2025, 2026 is already looking much better, Uisce Éireann doing a lot of work to improve and optimise how the plant is operating.
“They are hopeful it will come into compliance in 2026,” that assessment being done in 2027.
POOR WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT
Failure to meet EU standards also doesn’t come without consequences. Shannon notes that there was an infringement case taken against Ireland in 2019 for failure to comply with the directives, Rathcormac being one of those named sites. The case has been referred back to the Court of Justice of the European Union. “Ireland could pay significant fines if they don’t comply,” he says, this being one of the drivers to get things done.
Not performing quite as badly as Rathcormac, Mitchelstown had one of 12 results reaching the maximum allowed limit, the task in Mitchelstown being to focus on better operations and maintenance, Shannon says, with a long-term plan to upgrade. But they also assessed rivers around the country and “discharges from Mitchelstown are a pressure on the water quality in the local river, so this needs to be improved.”
Indeed, the concern for poor wastewater management is river water quality and river health. “We all want a clean, healthy river that we can enjoy,” Shannon says.
“If wastewater isn’t properly treated, it causes oxygen levels in the water to drop, nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are released, and the river gets choked up.” The excessive nutrients from the wastewater cause unwanted growth of algae and aquatic plants, he says. When a body of water is polluted by wastewater, “the pollutant-tolerant species take over and the pollutant-sensitive ones disappear, reducing the biodiversity of rivers.” It can also be a public health risk, if people come in direct contact it might make them sick.
Improvement across the country is slow, he says: “what we’re seeing in some cases is that improvements in one area have been offset by deterioration in another,” for example Arklow improved, while new failures showed up in Clonakilty. Shannon notes there was some good news for Cork: Ballycotton and Whitegate, which were noted for delinquencies in the last report, got brand new treatment plants last year.
For those off the main water system, the EPA do an annual report on septic tanks, Shannon adds, and, in the last report, 59% of sites failed their inspection, often thanks to “just simple things to fix, better operational maintenance or an infrastructural issue.”
‘THE 3 PS’
While public wastewater management is mostly down to Uisce Éireann, we can also play our part. As is oft-quoted, only flush “the three Ps” down the toilet: pee, poo, and paper. Items like wet wipes and cotton buds need to go into a bin, Shannon says, as sewers can get clogged up. “That’s the simplest way people can help,” he adds. Even if you have a private septic tank, leaks can still impact rivers and waterways nearby, so be sure to keep an eye on your own operations.
Also, don’t be afraid to contact Uisce Éireann. “If you are walking along by the river and see something that doesn’t look right, call Uisce Éireann straight away for them to come out,” Shannon suggests. If you happen to be there, it’s even better to call while it’s happening, “it gives them the opportunity to get out and respond quickly,” all to get waterways cleaner and wastewater managed that much more smoothly and environmentally.
