The European Commission has announced that it is taking a case against Ireland in the European Court of Justice over waste water treatment failures in 38 locations around the country.

The commission said that the failures are putting human health and the environment at risk and some should have been addressed as far back as 2000.

Ireland needs to invest €433 million in urban waste water treatment to reach full compliance with the EU waste water treatment directive. The directive is aimed at protecting human health and the environment.

However, Irish governments have known that the country was in breach of the directive in many locations around the country but not enough was done to address the issue.

EU member states had until 2000 to address the waste water treatment failures in larger urban areas, and until 2005 to address the problems affecting smaller areas.

In response to Ireland's failure to take action, the commission first initiated an infringement against Ireland in 2013 and followed up with a formal warning in 2015.

However, a director of the European Union's Directorate General for Environment, Aurel Ciobanu-Dordea, said the case may not result in a fine being imposed.

Speaking at the Oireachtas Committee on water charges, he said that in general a first judgment by the EU Court of Justice does not usually result in a fine being imposed.

He said it was more usual for the court to allow a further 18 months for the Government to comply with the directive, and that it would only be after such a period that a fine might be imposed by the court.

He said that here is still time for Ireland to avoid fines.

The locations are dotted all over the country including Arklow, Athlone, Cavan, Clifden, Dundalk, Navan, Tralee, Cork City and Waterford.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been flagging the problems in all of these locations in all its waste water reports in recent years.

Irish Water has plans to address all of the problems by 2021 in its business plans, provided it gets the required funding.

Opposition TDs reject State 'in breach of EU regulations' over water charges

Mr Ciobanu-Dordea told the Oireachtas water committee that Ireland is in breach of EU regulations over the Government's failure to apply domestic water charges.

He told the committee that it was "no matter of secrecy" that Ireland was "not complying with the water framework directive once it suspended the application of water charges."

When asked by Fine Gael's Martin Heydon if Ireland still has a derogation under Article 9, Paragraph 4 of the directive, he said the use of this derogation "does not apply".

Committee members challenged that opinion pointing out that the water charges introduced were not accepted by a large proportion of the population and so they were not workable.

TDs including Barry Cowen and Willie O'Dea of Fianna Fáil and Paul Murphy of the AAA/PPP all reacted by asking how can a new practice of charges become an "established practice" if it is an unworkable scheme.

They are claiming that, because of this, the "established practice" in Ireland never changed and that derogation Ireland claimed in relation to the imposition of water charges before 2009 should still apply.