The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, has promised to extend a pilot water quality project from Co Roscommon to other areas following this week's report from the Environmental Protection Agency highlighting the problems with group water schemes.
However, it is likely to be at least 2004 when new drinking water regulations come into force before many schemes meet the required standards.
The EPA report for 2000 found that the quality of water from some 40 per cent of group schemes was outside acceptable safety levels. This reflects the fact that many schemes take water from private sources - a river or lake - and do not treat or disinfect it in any way.
A spokesman from the Department of the Environment said he could not say what proportion of group water schemes around the country had at this stage taken up the offer of 100 per cent grants for treatment and disinfection equipment.
Individual local authorities process applications and the spokesman said it sometimes depended on how "pro-active county councils were.
He said £420 million was allocated in the National Development Plan for the rural water programme and this was "more than enough" to ensure all schemes which needed treatment facilities could get them. This money had to be spread over five years and therefore all schemes could not be upgraded at once.
He said it was up to local authorities to give priority to schemes with the worst contamination and follow the example of pilot projects in Co Roscommon.
A new Water Services Bill is also being drafted by the Attorney General which will introduce a licensing system for group schemes.
The problem of poor quality drinking water from group schemes mainly affects Border, midland, and western counties where there is the highest proportion of such privately-run schemes. Galway and Mayo both have some 140 group schemes, between them accounting for about one third of the total number in the State. According to the EPA report less than 10 per cent of drinking water nationally comes from group schemes.
The pilot scheme referred to as the Roscommon project started in 1999 and should soon start to have an effect on water quality in the county. Mr Dempsey said this week that the Roscommon model would be extended to other counties "and would enable specific programmes of improvement to be put in place", but he did not name any specific counties.
A project is expected to be announced in Co Monaghan next week and projects have also been piloted in Cavan and Mayo.
Roscommon was chosen for the pilot project because it had 185 group water schemes, seen as a manageable number. Water quality was monitored over a 12-month period from some 300 locations, including all public and private schemes.
The results highlighted the need for urgent action. In the case of samples from schemes using water from private sources more than 70 per cent tested positive for presumptive coliforms, indicating "significant bacteriological contamination".
Group schemes connected to the county council's water system had better water quality with 8.4 per cent of samples testing positive for coliforms.
Since these results were published last year pilot projects have been started to improve water quality. Each of these is operated as a public-private partnership and is funded by the Department of the Environment.
In the first project, 21 group schemes with the worst bacteriological contamination were grouped and a private contractor has been brought in to design, build and operate disinfection facilities.
The private contractor will maintain the system for 10 years and is required to ensure the water meets national drinking water regulations. This project cost £350,000 in addition to operating costs. Roscommon County Council says work has been ongoing during 2001 and will be completed in the new year.
In the second project, two new treatment plants are being installed at Cavetown Lake, to serve the Grangemore public water scheme and the Croghan private water scheme, and at Pollacat Springs, which will serve an amalgamation of three group schemes.
Again private companies have been brought in to design, build and operate the treatment plants for 20 years, and both are expected to be operational within months.
The third project, aimed at finding a solution for small group schemes, saw the installation of undersink and whole house water purification systems in 30 homes. Results from this study will be published in a report in the new year.
In addition to these three projects, Roscommon County Council also provided training for people operating semi-private group schemes.
Ms Patricia Bohan of Roscommon County Council's water services said recommendations would be drawn up on the basis of how the different schemes worked out. She said the monitoring and introduction of these projects was the first step in ensuring everybody's drinking water was up to standard.
While the 70 per cent contamination found in Roscommon is alarming, the Department of the Environment spokesman said the good news was that it was mainly organic - from septic tanks or agricultural sources - and therefore relatively easy to treat. There was "nothing to suggest the rest of the country is any better or worse than Roscommon".
The 12-months monitoring first done in Roscommon has now been extended to 800 group schemes around the State. These were selected from the 40 per cent which use private sources as opposed to local authority supplies as they are the ones with the greatest problems.