A Chara, - I find it laughable that Liam Reid (May 1st) would suggest that the EU water framework directive is a "new" piece of legislation from Europe.
The directive has been in existence since 2000 and as the name suggests, acts as an umbrella directive for all existing and future EU water regulation, including the bathing waters, nitrates, drinking water, groundwater and urban wastewater treatment directives which should be (and patently are not) implemented sufficiently in Ireland already. The purpose of the directive is to ensure all water bodies and resources within the EU are managed in a sustainable manner through a holistic integration of those daughter directives already in place.
It would seem that the concept of sustainability is anathema to the current Government, who have failed to implement sufficiently some of the most rudimentary aspects of this directive, though in some cases they have had over a decade to do so.
It was once true that the UK held the tag of "Dirty Man" of Europe due to more than a century of environmental abuse in the name of development.
I would suggest that Ireland may soon be eligible for this tag (since the UK are now leaders in the area of water management, as well as climate change) and if the Government is sincere in its efforts to adapt to and combat global warming, they should be aware that the country's water resources will be the first to be affected by our changing climate. - Yours, etc,
PETER TANGNEY, Long Ford Close, Oxford.
Madam, - Is it just me who is shocked that in the 21st century a minister in one of the most advanced, wealthiest, countries in the world can go before the people with a straight face and tout as an electoral promise that the Government will work towards (not achieve) clean water? Since we emerged from the caves people have known how to provide clean, safe water.
The earliest Indian medical tomes (from more than four millennia ago) suggested that water can be purified by filtration.
A thousand years later the Egyptians had a filtration and osmosis system for water treatment.
Anybody who has ever seen the Trevi Fountain in Rome will have seen a still operational, still clean, water delivery system (the Aqua Virgo) over 2000 years in operation. In modern Europe, Paisley in Scotland gained the first modern town water system with filtration in 1804.
It is starkly incredible that 4,000 years later the people of Galway and other towns and cities cannot enjoy the water quality that the ancient Indians and Romans took for granted.
Perhaps the opposition, as with e-voting, somehow blocked the Government in provision of clean water over the last 10 years?
Or perhaps the PD view is that there is a market mechanism (buy your own water) so it's fine?
It surely couldn't be a combination of local government incompetence, central Government fiscal misalignment, skewed planning and a supine, unresisting population? - Yours, etc,
BRIAN LUCEY, Sallins, Co Kildare.