Growing up in Ireland in the early 1970s, you could easily have had proud notions about how clean and green our island was. We may have been beset by other troubles, but our waters were clear, our rivers and lakes were teeming with fish and some 4,000 holy wells were there to remind us how we always venerated such a clean water supply. When you turned on the tap at home, you could imagine the water coming from a mountain spring, and feel sorry for those living in less hallowed lands. Even our new decimal coins celebrated nature, with the 50-pence piece carrying a woodcock and the 10-pence piece a leaping salmon. There was some romantic thinking behind such pride. In truth, Ireland’s urban rivers were more often treated like open sewers and our drinking water was far from safe. As recently as 1961, the Census showed that nearly half of Irish homes had either no flushing indoor toilet (46 per cent) or no running tap (43 per cent), and with those realities came inevitable contamination and health problems.What was a legitimate source of pride was the high quality of our rural environment, and this is where we have since seen the greatest loss. In the 1980s, 500 of our rivers had pristine status, which is now down to 20. Nearly half of our surface waters fail to meet a satisfactory ecological health standard. The wild salmon population has fallen 90 per cent, and is under increasing stress as water temperatures rise. Most farmland and wetland birds are red-listed for conservation, and the fungal, insect and soil life you don’t as easily see is also greatly diminished. However, when it comes to drinking water things are finally starting to get better, especially in urban areas where 99.98 per cent of public water supplies are now compliant with microbial standards. Unfortunately, for large swathes of rural Ireland, things are still getting worse. A study last year from University College Dublin, commissioned by An Fórum Uisce, set out the nature of the problem. Some 800,000 rural dwellers rely on their own private wells, and 38 per cent of these regularly fail to meet contamination standards. As a result, an estimated 20,000 people are getting sick each year, which costs our health system an estimated €101 million annually. Those private wells are failing due to a combination of three factors. First, they are impacted by the more extreme rainfall events climate change brings. Second, they are hit by excess nutrients running off from more intensive dairy and beef farming practices. Last but not least, most houses with a private well also depend on their own septic tank, and 60 per cent of inspected systems do not meet standards, which affects the nearby household well.The Government is not helping; in fact, it is making matters worse. It used up much political capital in Brussels to get an extension of the nitrates directive derogation while ignoring the cost to human and environmental health at home. It is now looking to weaken the rules on once-off housing in the countryside, which can only make the problem of water pollution worse. Even if it says it will insist on better standards in the monitoring and operation of the septic tanks, such solutions are expensive and complicated to install and run. It would be far cheaper and better to build more homes in the centre of rural towns and villages, as was envisaged in the rural development strategy agreed by the last government, a strategy Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil now seem to be abandoning.The UCD study came up with one practical suggestion that could improve things. They recommended free public testing of the water quality in private wells, as has been done in the Canadian Province of Ontario. There, it brought a real improvement, due to a corresponding uptake in mediation measures. It would cost the public purse some €6 million a year to provide the service, but would bring much greater savings by lowering health costs.What is also needed is an approach that addresses the pollution problem at source. The Government has just published the long-awaited land use review, which considers various scenarios for the future use of our land. It now needs to set out a plan that optimises such use to improve rural development and the restoration of nature as well as the production of food, timber, renewable energy and other natural services. Maybe the first criterion for success should be a healthy one, so we can achieve the dream of living in a pristine environment with crystal-clear waters. Why should we tolerate having to live on an island where we end up drinking, washing and swimming in water laced with our own excrement?