At the height of the holiday season, environmentalists say they have found used condoms, nappies and sanitary towels on one of the south-east's most popular beaches.
While it lost its EU blue flag in recent years, the beach at Tramore, Co Waterford, remains popular, with the run-up to the August racing festival usually seeing visitor numbers peak.
A local environmental group said action was urgently needed to deal with sanitary waste. The Saleens Environmental Group said it had noticed a marked increase in the number of condoms, nappies and sanitary towels on the beach in recent weeks. The problem worsened in the summer, but the underlying issue was the outdated sewage system in the town, the group said.
Mr Michael Whelan, the group's chairman, visited the beach with friends over the bank holiday and said they were appalled by the sanitary waste coming from an outflow pipe. "There was a high concentration of condoms, panty-liners and other sanitary waste. There was a large number of people visiting the strand over the weekend and swimming near to the waste. God only knows what they were swimming in."
The group is calling for an emergency filtration system to be installed at the outflow sewage pipe near Tramore.
Mr Whelan said Waterford County Council was in the process of building a sewage-treatment plant. "It may take up to two years for the plant to be up and running, even if the funds remain available to build it. In the meantime, the large number of visitors to the seaside resort continues to aggravate the problem."
Waterford County Council said construction work on the new sewage-treatment plant for Tramore would begin next year. A council spokesman said significant progress had been made in recent times in keeping the beach area clear. "If there was a particular recent problem, it may have been due to a temporary blockage at a section of the outflow pipe," he said.
The Mayor of Tramore, Councillor Ben Gavin, acknowledged that there had been a problem with the system and the waste which was usually siphoned off had come through the outflow pipe, but "the system is now fully operational again".