Planning indiscipline – Pollution risks highlighted

SO, An Bord Pleanála have confirmed what anyone with even a passing interest in Ireland’s disappearing countryside has known for at least a decade.

Too many one-off rural houses are being built on sites unable to deal with the sewage generated by the occupants. This, inevitably, has dreadful consequences for everyone’s water supplies.

Some 57% of groundwater tested by the EPA is contaminated by sewage and ABP chairman John O’Connor linked this pollution with the estimated 17,000 one-off rural houses built each year. He said the scale of this type of development was unmatched anywhere in Europe. A third of all such cases appealed to ABP were rejected because of potential pollution risks.