£420m package moves into place to bring water supplies up to standards outlined in EU directive

Sweeping changes in grant aid and subsidies for rural group water schemes are being introduced by the Department of the Environment.

A £420 million package, part of the National Development Plan, is being put in place to bring all rural water schemes up to the standards of the EU Directive on Drinking Water, between now and 2006.

The changes to the rural single or group water schemes announced recently by the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Mr Dempsey, include a more-than-threefold increase in the construction grant for new schemes, up from a maximum of £1,600 to £5,100 per house.

They also include a new 100 per cent grant for the installation of disinfection and filtration equipment and an annual subsidy of £75 per house where schemes participate in a Quality Assurance Scheme being set up by the National Federation of Group Water Schemes.

However, the fact that the Department has only slightly eased the conditions relating to the grant aid for single water schemes, from a 10-year waiting period to seven, is an indication that the Department favours larger group schemes over small or single ones.

According to the Minister, the changes are "the most significant news for the group water scheme sector for 40 years". However, the urgency and the strength of the "fire brigade-style" measures are also an indication of the severe need to bring the Republic's largely rural local water schemes up to standard.

In addition, the Department of the Environment is mounting an examination of all rural water supply systems to ensure that public health is safeguarded and that they comply with best practice in respect of operation and management.

A county-by-county inventory is being undertaken by those responsible for a quality-deficient scheme, and they will be required to draw up an action programme.

The absence of such a monitoring scheme was, according to the EU, one of the contributory factors in the State's breaches of drinking-water standards. In its case against Ireland for breaches of the Drinking Water Directive, the EU has criticised source protection measures, supply and management of the water schemes.

"The fact is we have recognised this for the past three years and interventions by way of source protection measures and the provision of precautionary water disinfection facilities are central to my Department's rural water programme," Mr Dempsey said.

In 1996 just £8.5 million was made available by central government for the rural water schemes, but by 1999, as complaints were made by the EU regarding the implementation of the Drinking Water Directive, this figure had risen to £38 million.

Now the National Development Plan aims to eradicate substandard supplies. The measures have been welcomed without reservation by the National Federation of Group Water Schemes, whose spokeswoman, Ms Clare Cashman, describes them as "rural empowerment".

"If you get a 10-house scheme which needs to be improved the unit cost per house shouldn't be more than £6,000, which is the maximum allowable at the grant rate of 85 per cent," she said.

"That amounts to £5,100 per house and on a 10-house scheme that is a grant of £51,000. The necessary improvements to quality and distribution should not be more than that."

Ms Cashman also said that rural communities could use their management of the water supply as a "useful tool over the development of their community.

"You see builders and property developers who connect into the water supply and they don't care where the water comes from, or how much there is. The local authority is supposed to control development but they often don't and you get water shortages.

"In a rural group water scheme the supply is owned by the householders themselves so they can directly control who connects to it. The community which controls its water supply controls its future," she said.