5 February 2003
Dr. Henry: I welcome the Minister and the Bill. However, it is very unfortunate that we have to bring forward a Bill amending, to a great extent, one we passed so recently. This is not the fault of the Minister but we must try to make sure the Bills we pass do not require amendment within a few years, which is what has happened in respect of the 1996 Bill. I was present when it passed through the House. From the point of view of the public it is unfortunate that we have to change legislation so rapidly. All the changes do not have to be made because of an EU directive because the EU directive was issued in 1992. It took us a long time to do anything about that directive and, in the meantime, it was very hard for the public to know where it stood. It left the private sector wondering what kinds of pollution controls applied to it.
As many Senators have said, the Bill takes away substantial power from locally represented politicians in terms of having control over waste management. While I have never been a member of a county council, I have been a member of a health board. What the Minister has done is understandable because unfortunately it is frequently very difficult to make elected representatives bring forward any form of control, local legislation or policy which does not bring good news. If there is any bad news, they are most reluctant to deal with it. While the Bill may involve a diminution of local democracy, I see the reason the Minister believed he had to give the power to local managers. Where local democracy is concerned, this move is objectionable, in principle, but there have been so many problems in this area.
Given that we are talking about a greater devolution of powers, it is extraordinary that the Bill takes back such serious powers from local representatives. As I said, they only want to deal with the good news. Unfortunately, they have only themselves to blame in this instance. It is worth pointing out that councillors in England, following the Nolan report, have to had to be educated in the areas of law with which they are dealing. It might be worthwhile if we considered doing this here to make councillors realise they have huge responsibilities as well as major powers at local level. Does the Minister believe there is a possibility of having some form of training for councillors in this area because much of the legislation with which they have to deal is very complicated, as is the Bill before us?
Would it not be splendid if we could use plainer and more comprehensible language in legislation, particularly legislation that has to be dealt with by ordinary people at local level? Section 12 of the Bill substitutes a new Part in the place of Part IV of the Act of 1992, section 99A(3) of which new Part states, "Regulations under paragraph (a), (b) or (c) of subsection (1) shall not be made otherwise than with the consent of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment". I think it means that regulations made under section 99A(1) must be made with the consent of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. They mean the same sort of thing.
How can an ordinary person read section 19(2)(b)? It reads as follows: "...in subsection (10), by substituting the following paragraph for paragraphs (d), (e) and (f) (inserted by the Act of 2001...". It becomes extraordinarily complicated. Officials will be delighted to hear that the Bill is being read very thoroughly by someone.
Mr. Cummins: It is hard enough to read.
Dr. Henry: Schedule 1 refers to activities to which Part IV applies. If two or more activities falling within the same paragraph under a particular heading of this Schedule are carried on in the same installation by the same person, for the purpose of any threshold specified in the paragraph, the capacities of these activities shall be aggregated.
I am interested in matters relating to food and drink. Paragraph 7.3 refers to commercial brewing, distilling or malting installations, where production capacity exceeds 100,000 tonnes per year, not included in paragraph 7.8. Paragraph 7.8(b) refers to vegetable raw materials with a finished product production capacity greater than 300 tonnes per day - averaged on a quarterly basis. Brewing is based on barley, a vegetable raw material. If the capacities of activities are to be aggregated, are we to aggregate the 100,000 tonnes per year with the 300 tonnes per day multiplied by the number of days per year on which production takes place? This is very complicated for someone who wishes to stay within the law. I presume the provision is in place because the Government does not wish the legislation to apply to those involved in home brewing but I might be wrong. I found the Bill quite difficult to follow.
Senator Kitt referred to the report on the quality of drinking water in Ireland which was published recently. It is a very fine report. While public water supply is pretty good, there are some very worrying issues with certain group water supplies which should be looked at. The Bill contains an excellent section on groundwater but it would be good to include the report's recommendations on the quality of drinking water. If we do not, we will have to bring forward another Bill to take account of them. Some of the issues involved are urgent, one of which is the problem of cryptosporidium in the water supply. We do not have legislation which demands a search for cryptosporidium, a very unpleasant parasite usually originating in calves with scour. It can get into groundwater through the spreading of slurry from where it can get into the drinking water supply which makes this a serious problem. The last time I raised the matter I said there had been a problem in the Westmeath County Council local authority area. The council wrote to me to ask what I meant by this, which I thought was great. It recognised that there was a problem and discovered what its source in Mullingar was. There was no onus on it to look for cryptosporidium but it did and was able to get rid of it pretty briskly.
Cryptosporidium is a dangerous water pollutant because it can cause very serious diarrhoea. An outbreak in eastern Canada several years ago resulted in the deaths of seven people. We do not know how many outbreaks we have had in which the cause of diarrhoea in an area was cryptosporidium because we do not enforce regulations which direct the authorities to look for the parasite. We know there has been an outbreak in Northern Ireland, which means that far from thinking Westmeath County Council was not doing a good job, we should recognise that it was. I am quite sure that is because it has the only female CEO in the country. She looked at the hygiene of the area's water supply very closely.
It would be a good idea to implement the report's recommendations now rather than wait for yet another Bill. Some of the problems we face are extraordinarily serious. The Bill is a fine example of good and technical legislation but it is not very clear in many places to people like me who attempt to read it. I look forward to hearing about brewing and hope I am right to think that the legislation is phrased as it is to avoid a scenario in which we chase home brewers around the countryside under the regulations. It is not clear to me from the Bill whether the EPA now has the power to bring people to court through its notices on licences or if it must still obtain notices under various pollution Acts. There is much in the Bill which I look forward to addressing on Committee Stage. In fact, I feel a few amendments coming on.
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