More than 250 million litres of effluent is leaking from septic tanks every day and posing a risk to water supplies, according to figures issued by the Green Party.
There are already up to half a million septic tanks installed in Ireland, many of which are "unsuitable" and "between 15,000 and 20,000 new tanks are being installed every year", the party says.
Wicklow general election candidate Cllr Deirdre de Burca said the Greens would introduce a new septic tank servicing subsidy for rural homeowners if elected.
Launching an election policy document in Kilkenny called "Balancing Rural Development", party leader Trevor Sargent TD said the population was growing in rural areas but infrastructure was "falling apart".
He outlined plans to "encourage enterprise, tourism and transport in rural Ireland . . . to ensure that rural communities develop in their own right and not just as commuter dormitories".
The Green Party says it would promote a policy of "clustering" new houses in rural areas with proper services, and introduce changes to the planning laws "to control speculative and holiday-home development".
Proposals include "a new social and affordable housing development levy of 4 per cent of the build cost or 4 per cent of site sales" and tougher enforcement of Section 47 occupancy agreements to restrict selling on of houses.
Party deputy leader Cllr Mary White said "the new alarm clock" in rural Ireland was the sound of the front door slamming at 6am "as people rush up the road to work in Dublin". The Greens would establish a National Transport Authority "to study the profile of travel patterns and corresponding transport needs in all rural areas" and make "significant investments" in rural transport services, she said.
Mr Sargent criticised the Government's rural transport policy for being "focused on pubs and how to get to and from them" and said the €13 million allocated to the Rural Transport Initiative between 2001 and 2006 was "wholly inadequate", compared to the "€7 billion given to non-national road improvements over the same period".
Cllr Brian Meaney, the party's candidate in Clare, called for "designated market spaces within all towns and the pedestrianisation of streets during market days to encourage and promote farmers' markets".
He said "the most viable farmholding in Clare today is a 10-acre farm producing high-quality food for local consumption".
The Greens would establish a new Rural Enterprise Agency to promote rural tourism and the cultivation of crops for renewable energy and would also develop an "all-Ireland walking development plan".
Mr Sargent said he supported the Labour Party's call for a 2 per cent reduction in the basic tax rate "as long as the money could be made up somewhere else".
