Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue, says the allocation of €690k made to Donegal County Council under the new multi-annual capital investment programme, will help resolve water service issues at six housing estates in the county.
Money is to be allocated to Donegal County Council, for works at Dromore Park, Killygordon; Beechwood Park, Convoy; Stone Park, Glenties; Doonan Court, Donegal Town and St. Jude’s Court & Hazelwood Drive, Lifford.
The announcement was made on Monday by Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien, under the multi-annual developer provided water services infrastructure resolution programme.
“This programme is focused on housing estates which are not taken-in-charge by local authorities and do not have their water services connected to the public water services network, but rely instead on infrastructure – often temporary in nature – which was provided by developers,” the Minister explained.
“Much of this infrastructure, generally consisting of small standalone wastewater treatment “package” plants were put in place in the 1990’s and early 2000’s,” he added.
Minister McConalogue said that the focus of this first multi annual programme is on estates in towns and villages where the resolution is to connect their water services to the public networks.
“Residential estates normally receive their water services – drinking water supply and disposal of wastewater – from the public (Irish Water) network. However, some estates, that are not taken-in-charge, do not have their water services networks connected to the public network. Instead these estates rely on ‘developer provided water services infrastructure’ (DPI) for their water services.”
The Minister explained that a ‘National Taking in Charge Initiative Report’ published in 2018, included a recommendation to introduce a multi-annual funding programme to progressively resolve DPI estates in a sustainable way.
“The purpose of the multi-annual programme is to progressively facilitate the resolution of DPI estates, in a sustainable manner, to support the taking-in-charge of these estates. I welcome the announcement for the six projects in Donegal, but I know there are more estates in the county awaiting similar works,” he said.
The Minister concluded: “The announcement made this week is just the first wave of projects for investment under the multi-annual programme and it will take a number of funding programmes to fully resolve DPI. With that in mind I will continue to work closely with Donegal County Council and my cabinet colleague Minister O’Brien, to highlight additional estates which could be connected to the public network and could be included within the programme at an early date,” concluded the Minister.
The full allocation to Donegal Projects is as follows:
Dromore Park, Killygordon €382,410
Beechwood Park, Convoy € 12,375
Stone Park, Glenties €. 7,875
Doonan Court, Donegal Town € 45,750
St Jude’s Court & Hazelwood Drive, Lifford €244,107