Sewage spills in Ireland are still a “risk to public health”, the EPA has warned.

A new report by the agency has found that many towns and villages across Ireland are still discharging raw sewage into the water every day.

The EPA Urban Wastewater Treatment report shows that 16 areas are still discharging raw sewage every day – down from 29 at the beginning of 2023.

Uisce Éireann has warned it could still take more than two decades to fix the country's infrastructure and EPA spokesperson Noel Byrne said that is “too long to wait”. 

“There were 13 areas around the country that were discharging 1,500 tons of raw sewage per day - they’ve been resolved since the start of 2023, which is really positive,” he told Newstalk Breakfast. 

“However, we have seen that over half the treatment plants didn’t always meet the standards [by the EU] set by to protect the environment - which really isn’t good enough. 

“Uisce Éireann are saying it’s going to take over two decades to achieve these standards required to protect the environment. 

“Really, two decades is too long to wait; it’s causing damage to the quality of biodiversity and it’s also a risk to public health.”

Raw sewage being discharged into shallow sea from the vent in a sewage outfall pipe. Picture by: Alamy.com

In Budget 2025, the Government allocated Uisce Éireann an extra €1 billion for their Capital Investment Plan for 2025-2029. 

Despite this, Mr Byrne said even more cash will be needed to fix the system. 

“Some of these things are short-term issues - so, it might be a thing like equipment breakdown - and really what you’re looking for from Uisce Éireann there is better preventative maintenance,” he said. 

“For the longer-term, we are looking for a greater investment into that space, so the EPA has identified 73 priority areas where we need to see Uisce Éireann targeting their investment. 

“We do need to accelerate the delivery of these projects because we have seen certain projects on occasion where they should take maybe five to seven years but have taken a lot longer to deliver. 

“So, we do need to see that timeframe shortened for a number of projects.” 

Housing crisis

Mr Byrne said sewage spills on the environment ‘really can’t be allowed to continue’ and there are too many towns without a sewage treatment plant. 

“Yes, we do have a housing crisis, we do need to build houses but fundamental to that process is if you build a new housing estate, you have to build sewage treatment to [cope] with it,” he said. 

“You wouldn’t build a house without a toilet in it, for example.” 

Since 2024, Uisce Éireann has overseen the construction of new wastewater infrastructure in 34 towns and villages which has ended raw sewage discharge.

Main image: A large spill of untreated sewage flowing straight into the waters of the Dublin bay from Ringsend Wastewater Plant. Picture by: Alamy.com