All owners of domestic wastewater treatment systems in Ireland (including septic tanks) will be required to register their systems with their water services authority. There will be a registration fee, which will be set at €5 for the first three months of the registration period and €50 thereafter,
It is not yet possible to register. There will be an on-line registration system and also paper based registration. It expected that a registration system will be in place by mid April 2012 .
Inspections – the Dept of the Environment have stated that inspections of waste tretmaent systems will be ” objective and evidence-based.”
Inspections will be targeted towards areas where drinking water sources or habitats are at risk from septic tank discharges.
The government have also stated that people with older septic tanks will not have to upgrade to modern standards, – for example those set out in the EPA’s 2009 Code of Practice.
They also stated that householders will not have to to acquire additional land to facilitate remediation work.
Where an on-site system fails an inspection, the remediation work required will be based on factors such as the nature of the problem, the extent of risk to public health or the environment, existing site size and the hydrological and geological conditions present.
. Inspections under the new legislation will probably not commence until 2013 . Householders should take care not to allow uninvited persons, or persons claiming to be septic tank inspectors, to enter onto their property in advance of the launch of inspections. Householders will be formally notified by their local authority if their domestic waste water treatment system is to be inspected and inspectors will be required to carry identification and to present this on request to householders.