Madam, - There has been widespread public concern over the recently published EPA report on Irish water quality which gives rise to a question that is seldom answered in Irish public life: "Who is to blame?" We are past masters at the fine art of covering up and this is particularly so where public bodies are concerned.
The answer to the question I have posed is not - as the press have widely claimed - answered by attributing blame to farmers and householders who have polluted our acquifers, resulting in polluted percolation to our lakes and rivers. The fault lies directly with local authorities throughout the country, which had direct responsibility and indirectly with the Department of Local Government, which had the power to monitor, control, compel or interdict where necessary the activities of the local authorities, power that they never exercised.
Both are grossly derelict under three headings.
Firstly, it is the local authorities which prior to the Environmental Protection Agency Act of 1992 were solely responsible, subject to certain rights of appeal, for the licensing of discharges to waters and the granting of planning permission.
Secondly, local authorities failed to control the serious pollution of water bodies by the running off of nutrients from farming activities carried on adjacent to those water bodies as they were empowered to do by making bye-laws. These powers were vested in local authorities under the provisions of the Local Government (Water Pollution)(Amendment) Act 1990 as amended by the Waste Management Act of 1996. These powers were discretionary and as is usual with powers so circumscribed were almost universally ignored until the flurry of activity in the recent past when Europe cracked the whip.
Thirdly, local authorities failed to control pollution under the Water Pollution Act of 1977 which gave them wide powers including that of prosecution. These again were almost universally ignored leaving it to the Regional Fisheries Boards to attempt the control of water pollution - often caused by the local authorities themselves - from 1977 almost to date, certainly for a period of 25 years. There have been a limited number of prosecutions nationally but in Co Galway there were no prosecutions whatever for water pollution from 1977 until about 2000 by the responsible local authorities, only those brought by the Galway Regional Fisheries Board. The Galway Regional Board mounted many prosecutions against the Galway County Council in this period for gross pollution of rivers and lakes.
There was, of course, strong rural objection to the controls listed above but successive governments, responsible Ministers and local authorities should be ashamed of themselves for giving in to these pressures and failing to control pollution. They should apologise but as the late John Wayne said "that will be the day". - Yours, etc,
HENRY COMERFORD,
Luimnagh West,
Corrandulla,
Co Galway.