Dr. Eimear Cotter:

Anything that helps people address their septic tank issues, which are impacting on water quality in areas, is positive. We are supportive of that.

I will deal with national environmental policy and hand over to Ms Gurrie on taking cases. A key recommendation that came out of The State of Environment Report, our major publication, which is published every four years and the latest one of which came out in 2020, was that we need a national environmental policy position. This was in recognition of the fact we have lots of different plans and policies. Some of them are connected, some are competing with each other, some have unintended consequences and intentions, and this is not really looked at in any coherent way. Having a national environmental policy position would set out our overall ambition for environmental protection in the country. It would allow us to express more succinctly the connections between different policy areas and to explore and tease out what the tensions and potential and trade-offs might be. This is something we would like to see happen, and I know there has been a commitment from the Government to produce an environmental policy position, which I believe is under development. We see this as a significant opportunity to look across water quality, biodiversity and the agriculture sector. Many policies will feed into this, and they are only increasing as the environmental dimensions run through all sectors. This would allow some coherence to be brought to environmental protection in the country.