Department response ‘very disappointing’

DEBATE Percolation testing rules stymieing development

Hopes for changes to EPA regulations on percolation testing for planning in West Cavan had cold water poured on them in a response by Minister Dara O'Brien to correspondence from Cavan County Council.

The local authority wrote to the Minister of State about the need to implement locally appropriate regulations, on foot of a motion by Cllr John Paul Feeley who said that existing rules were stymieing development in west Cavan.

The response from the Minister of State at the the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Dara O'Brien, regarding percolation tests and the granting of planning permission, was described as “very disappointing”.

Cllr Feeley called for a resolution of the issues surrounding percolation tests at a previous meeting of the authority. He called on the Minister and the EPA to address the problem to allow local authorities grant planning permission on the basis of engineered treatment solutions available and accepted in other jurisdictions.

Cllr Feeley has said the environmental regulators 'one size fits all' approaches is “completely out of touch”. At the March meeting of the local authority the Fianna Fáil elected representative said the Minister's response showed “no regard for the solutions available”.

“I am not an engineer, but I am entitled to believe what engineers tell me,” Cllr Feeley told members. He continued to say that the Department's suggestion that there is adequate water and waste water treatment facilities in town and villages was not helpful

“It's not a very welcome response,” Cllr Feeley said.

“Hopefully the EPA review will bring more positive news,” he concluded.

The last time the matter was discussed in the Dáil was when a private members Water Pollution Amendment bill was debated in 2018.

Speaking at the time Sinn Fein Deputy Martin Kenny noted that in west Cavan and Leitrim “almost 90% of the soil will not pass the percolation test, has meant that, over the past number of years, in many rural parishes where there is no town or alternative, there can be no planning permission”.

Deputy Kenny stated that the standard of practice in the EPA code of practice was written in 2009 and came into effect in 2010: “It stated that if the soil on a site was too dense and failed the percolation test, the result would be what they call zero emissions or zero discharge. In other words, no matter how well the treatment system on site treated the effluent, even if it treated it to drinking water standard, a cup of that water is not allowed into a river or stream.”