Less than 40 per cent of the homes with septic tanks in Mayo have registered their tanks according to figures given out this week. At a reconvened meeting of the Water Supply and Sewerage SPC of Mayo County Council on Wednesday (the previous meeting was suspended as there was no quorum ) the members were given an up to date break down of the figures.
Paul Benson, acting director of services for Mayo County Council, told the meeting: “There are 9,455 septic tanks registered in Mayo up to Monday of this week, that’s about 38 per cent of the total we’d have here, which is a figure of around 24,500 in Mayo.”
He went on to encourage people to register saying: “We have up to February 2013 to register them for €50 and I’d urge everyone to that. And just to inform anyone who has been misguided to think that if you don’t register you won’t be inspected, you are wrong.”
Earlier in the meeting Sinn Féin councillor Rose Conway Walsh called for some kind of incentive scheme where funding would be made available to people to get their septic tank systems up to scratch if they are not already. She said that people are hard pressed enough as it is and they are worried that if a problem is discovered they will have to fork out amounts as much as €10,000 to €15,000 to get things fixed.
