Government ‘ignored EC health warnings’

THE Government is relying too much on cancer-linked chlorine to disinfect the country’s drinking water, according to the European Commission.

The commission also warned that pig farmers and construction companies are using legal loopholes to pollute without penalties.

And work on the country’s largest wind-farm at Derrybrien in Co Galway, which caused a dangerous landslide 18 months ago, has resumed without any study on its effects, it said.

Despite a series of warnings about Ireland’s lax attitude towards health and planning over the past few years, nothing has changed, a commission spokesperson said yesterday.

As a result, the commission is taking Ireland to the European Court of Justice over three cases where the Government is failing to protect human health and the environment.

One of the cases involves sewage treatment plants, including Europe’s largest sewage plant at Ringsend in Dublin and domestic septic tanks in rural areas.

The move was welcomed by the Ringsend Environmental Group. Chairman Damien Cassidy said Dublin City Council had refused to listen to the concerns of residents and experts before the e500 million plant was built.

“Dublin City Council just laughed at our concerns and we are delighted with the European Commission’s decision,” he said.

Septic tanks continue to be allowed in areas where they leak into the ground water and contaminate local water schemes because there are no satisfactory rules governing them, the commission said.

“In the last two years we found that over 1,000 water schemes were contaminated with bacteria from sewage.

“Ireland is attempting to deal with the health risk by spending Irish taxpayers’ and community money on chlorination and other forms of disinfection rather than protecting the water,” said a spokeswoman.

Chlorine has been linked to a significant increase in bladder and colon cancer in other countries where it is used, EU experts said.

The commission is taking a second case relating to developments such as pig farms and quarries, which are going ahead without planning permission.

Many of these developments should have an environmental impact assessment carried out to ensure they are not harmful to health or the environment, the commission said.

In the third case, the commission is asking the court to fine the Government for failing to report on how it is tackling damage to the ozone layer, despite the court ordering it to do so last October. MEP Avril Doyle accused the Government of mortgaging the next generation’s future.

“It is clear that the Minister for the Environment has not examined the cost to our environment nor to his department of its repeated failure to implement environmental legislation, not to mention the far more serious costs in terms of human health and quality of life that Irish citizens are being forced to pay,” she said.