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Updated, 15.07
THE THORNY TOPIC of mandatory inspections for Ireland’s septic tanks is back in the news this week, as the Government launches its final push to have the appropriate legislation pushed through the Dáil.
TDs are set to finish debating the Water Services (Amendment) Bill 2011 on Wednesday and Thursday, with the Seanad putting the finishing touches to the Bill on Thursday afternoon.
After that, it’ll be sent off to President Higgins to be signed into law – perhaps with a polite request for it to be signed before the February 3 deadline which the government claims is being enforced upon it.
So what’s the whole idea behind the proposals – and why have they proven so controversial?
It all stems from a set of European Union directives. A directive, put simply, is an instruction to each member state that it must enact laws to achieve a certain goal, but doesn’t prescribe how that should be done.
In this particular case, the directive ordered that governments introduce whatever laws that were necessary to ensure that the disposal of human waste did not have a harmful impact on the environment. The first of the directives was adopted in 1975.
When countries don’t abide by directives, the European Commission – which is the ‘guardian’ of the European Treaties – can then take individual member states to court for their failure to enact Irish law.
This is what triggered the current problems. In October 2009 the European Court of Justice found that Ireland had failed to meet its obligations under the various directives to enforce particular standards in the emissions of human waste.
Put simply, it was Ireland’s network of almost half a million septic tanks – and the possibility that they could be leaking toxins into the ground, and therefore into water streams.
The frustrating thing about the current case is that there may not necessarily be anything wrong with a large number of septic tanks – the matter at hand is more about making sure they’re all in perfect working order.
Because there hasn’t been any formal register of septic tanks up until now – and no method of inspecting them to see if they’re all in sound working order – it’s impossible to know just how effective Ireland’s tanks are.
A crash course: septic tanks are large drums, of up to 2,000 gallons in capacity, which sit under most rural gardens. In cases where a house isn’t connected to an urban sewage system, toilet waste (which often forms ammonia) is flushed to this tank where a bacterial environment decomposes it.
The bacteria in the tank then breaks down the ammonia, or any other harmful material, into water or other minerals which are more easily and safely absorbed by the ground.
Or, at least, that’s the intention. Because some tanks have existed for decades without any inspection, it’s impossible to know how many tanks might be defective in some way – and are allowing harmful human waste to be pumped into the ground.
There’s two main reasons why many politicians are objecting to these plans. The first is that they believe it’s fundamentally anti-rural.
They explain their argument as follows: during the boom years, as more and more housing estates were built in urban areas around Greater Dublin, their new residents were essentially provided with a link to urban water and sewage systems, free of charge.
Parallel to that, local authorities were given massive amounts of government funding to upgrade their waste disposal systems in order to cater for the growing numbers living on the country’s east coast and other urban areas.
But at the same time, they argue, very little was spent on similar projects in more rural areas – and there was precious little financial support for those building homes in rural areas who had to supply their own sewage disposal units.
Although the government says the mandatory inspections should only cost around €50 each, any septic tanks which fail the test would be liable for replacement – at the potential cost of thousands of euro.
There are also some question marks about the exact nature of the inspection – how invasive or thorough an inspection might be, or whether it will amount to mere ‘box-ticking’.
It’s also particularly rough on the people of Cavan, whose county council has already been voluntarily following European standards for a few years already – meaning newer householders will still be paying for inspections, even though they’re virtually guaranteed to pass them.
The other resistance – which is a more political one – concerns the fines that Ireland is likely to face for not following the directive more quickly. The government says the legislation must be enacted before February 3 if Ireland is to avoid fines.
The logic of environment minister Phil Hogan, whose job it is to implement this new ruling, is that February 3 is the deadline by which Ireland must submit a response to the European Court of Justice defending itself against any fines from the ECJ.
That’ll be the last chance for Ireland to assure the court that it’s following the directive, Hogan says – so if the legislation isn’t in place before then, the court proceedings will go ahead without Ireland having a chance to defend itself.
Those fines start off with a lump sum of €2.7 million, with a penalty of €26,173 for every day afterward that Ireland hasn’t fallen in line.
The European Commission has told us – and the opposition parties – that it isn’t quite so straightforward, however. Although Ireland must have its response sent to the ECJ by February 3, the ruling in the matter isn’t expected until at least the summer – and probably not until autumn.
Opposition parties argue that Ireland can’t possibly face fines until the ruling is issued by the ECJ – and that the government is therefore trying to rush the bill through the Oireachtas quicker than it needs to.
This came to a head last week, when the opposition members of the Oireachtas Environment committee tried to stop the Bill from proceeding until they heard expert input from the likes of An Taisce and the Environmental Protection Agency.
They were foiled by the government side, however, who overruled the proposals and kept the bill on its current path.
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Like slurry pits and breweries I suppose?
http://www.bim.ie/training/safetytraining/. Would this not be a matter for the Irish Sea Fisheries Board training courses. If it was a construction site issue, it would be addressed in a Safe Pass day course. Surely it’s mandatory to do it before going onto a ship.
Although I suppose it could be an oderless hidden killer, training might not fix it.
There should be *free* mandatory day courses for farmers as well every two years say.
Thats like the mandatory one day course that all bus and lorry drivers must do every year. At a cost to themselves of course.
You have to do if for the ‘cert’. But as a mate said: “Loada lads, half of them without a word of english, sitting in a class for a day, getting a safety cert for something they are not even tested in afterwards. What could go wrong?”
We like our ‘courses’ in Ireland so we do. These certs keep trainers in jobs and officialdom get to pretend they are doing something proactive. Imagine a safety course with no theory or practice test at the end??? Just pay the money and get the cert and sure now its all cushdy
I would have thought that all boats/ ships would have some form of gas detection or portable detectors aboard? Considering the amount of confined spaces on them. You can buy a single gas detector calibrated for Hydrogen Cyanide which is cross sensitive to Hydrogen sulphide which are two of the three gases that the two crewmen were overcome by. A single gas instrument would cost a few hundred euro, which is a lot cheaper than a funeral. RIP to the Crewmen.
For the first responders out there especially those championing the useless Eircode. None of our harbours or quays have an Eircode and never will. Pat Rabbittes billing & taxing code will mean delsys for these types of accidents because better GPS based location codes are available. Welcome to Ireland where merit plays second fiddle to Labour political strokes.
Most quays and harbours are marked on maps and are usually located by the sea. Pretty sure 999 know where they are.
Don’t mind him Kev, any excuse for a rant about Eircodes. It’s a wonder the fool isn’t on about a missing Eircode on the Apple money too………damn sure if anyone dials 999 and says Killybegs quay or Kilmore Quay, or cliffs of Moher then they will have the intelligence to know.
Plenty of minor quays & harbours around the country & weren’t National Ambulance Service unable to find Wexford Quay six months ago. But hey lets settle for mediocrity… It’s what we do.
Let me guess loc8 codes would solve the problem.
Good guess…
So what your saying Get Lost, is that since the foundation of the state that emergency services have been unable to find beaches, quays, cliffs, harbours. People must be dying in their droves at these locations for the want of guided assistance. Your stubborn, outdated, ignorant rant is a pathetic insult to the work of the Coastguard, Lifeboat volunteers (God bless their bravery and commitment) and all the state emergency services who do so much. After months of you shoehorning your agenda into everything here on the Journal I really wish you would do exactly as your name implies and, GET LOST.
Anthony this is not about the emergency services finding places. This is about the public being able to accurately able to report the position of a casualty to the emergency services. We had, and still have the opportunity too introduce a code that can help with that.
Small story for you. October last year while out on a family cycle wife had an accident on a main road and ended up unresponsive. I asked a passerby to call 999 but the passerby didn’t know where we were to tell the operator. Now ECAS can take a Loc8code but NAS do not.
The woman passed here phone to me and i had by that time already used the Point8 app got generate a Loc8code with 6m accuracy buy by the time the phone had been passed to me the call had switched from ECAS to NAS.
Thinking i was still on to ECAS i called out the Loc8 code using the phonetic alphabet giving a quick and precise location. NAS operator said to me “Where did you get that? Google???” i responded that it was a Loc8 code and he said “we don’t use them”
So i responded that we were approximately 2km north of lucan on the Clonee road. NAS operator said sorry I don’t know where that is, WHAT COUNTY ARE YOU IN.
Eircode cannot help in this scenario repeated many times a day all over the country. If you cannot see the value of Loc8 code in this scenario you are a moron.
Ultimately we have a situation where the Department of Communication is hindering rapid access to causalities with their protectionist agenda towards the UNTESTED and half baked Eircode political postcode.
Also Vodafone had a serious outage yesterday so their data network was down. This means for anybody on the Vodafone network EIRCODE was totally unusable….enjoy.
First, and most importantly, I sincerely hope that your wife has made a full recovery from her injury. It obviously has had a deep and frightening effect upon you as it would with anyone.
I certainly see and understand your point.
Speaking as a former member of the rural emergency services, we trained and studied our butts off learning our area and in rural Ireland we have so many Gurteens and Newtowns and small unheard of towns lands. The 999 controllers are so expert at gathering information from panicked and frightened callers. They relay the often scant info to the crews and the crews know from our training and dedication, who, where and most importantly how quickly to get to the incident. Oversight from Government and EU showed that our response times and incident locating ability before Loc8 or Eircode were to be commended. We did often take GPS coordinates too. No system is perfect even the UKs postcode is flawed some 30 or more years into it.
However, in this tragic story Eircode or any other locating media is not mentioned, nor was there a difficulty locating the casualties location I believe.
Thanks Anthony. Suspected broken ribs and a bit dazed. She was unresponsive because she was badly winded. I managed to get her back on her bike and through a park to a retained fireman buddy who looked after her as she went into shock and i went to get the car to collect the kids 3 & 5 who were with us. 5 year old was distraught as his mammy crashed trying to avoid him and at one point he thought she was dead. Now my fireman buddy is actually the person who came up with the name GetLostEircodes and he also designed the logo. He also told me of 2 incidents last year in the park we had just traversed. One where a man jad just had a heart attack and emergency services couldn’t find him…he died. The other some teenagers had broken into a skateboard park after hours and had fallen badly breaking his collar bone in such a way as to nearly bleed to death.. again emergency services had great difficulty finding him. Gary Delaneys Loc8codes can be put on existing signs in parks or on posts on waymarked trails such as wicklow way, mayo greenway or even canals. More tech savvy can use their smartphone. Loc8 is tried tested and proven and is used by disaster planners for that reason. It was for example used to close off roads during the Manx Air crash. Don’t for one minute think that Rabbitte, White, Naughten or the department have any interest in assisting emergency services who were never consulted at all on Eircode. DCENR have been actively trying to scupper Gary since 2010 and we are all the poorer as a result. My point in this story is there are hundreds of minor harbours, quays and jettys on both our coastal & inland waterways and they will never get an Eircode. A simple Loc8code on a Quay wall or fence post will identify the location accurately saving valuable time. DCENR are now promoting app with non hierarchical random What3Words from UK…anybody but Loc8.
Yes, Glad it was not a very serious injury. Scary one especially as you had young children to manage too, as I said I fully understand where your coming from.
And agree!
Loc8 is superior as long as one has a device that’s working etc. It’s a good system and I suspect that the Eircode was well in play and probably deals done with vested interests before Loc8. They had been rattling on about Eircode in the late 80′s. Using inferior or not using alternative information sources or being open to using better information in emergency situations is criminal.
This article is misleading the crewmen Rip died because of refrigeration gas, there was a fault in the refrigeration system, gas had leaked & do to the boat being moored for a period of time it had settled into the confined space, at the bottom of the fish hold tank. as the crew men climbed down he entered an area with poisonous gas & NO OXYGEN. The second crewman tried to safe him but was also overcome, A regrettable accident & very rare due to the high standard of maintenance & training . Crews are trained about fumes in confined space from engines etc but they are detectable by alarms & also smell, this was in a tank that is usually filled with sea water so normal alarms/ detector would not work as they would need to be salt waterproof they could not detect gases.. Also it if very very rare that refrigeration gases leaks & even rarer that it would find it’s way to a tank.RIP
Confined space entry training for all spaces not considered a normal place of work should be provided to workers, this type of accident happens quite a bit unfortunately
How very sad is that!!
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