Ms Oonagh Duggan:

On the advocacy work undertaken by us in Northern Ireland, because, as the Deputy rightly said, we had a launch in Belfast and the Northern Ireland Environment Link does that for the main part. There has been considerable engagement with people there on an informal basis, with the Departments and also with MEPs in London. There has been a great deal of communication. They are also working on what is happening with the new environmental regulations. We are keeping an eye on both sides because new environmental laws are being developed within the UK in the common frameworks. They are also working on that. That is ongoing but I cannot comment on how well this work is being taken on board in Northern Ireland but perhaps I can come back to the Deputy on that matter.

I do not have as much information as the Deputy on the two cases she mentioned concerning the River Faughan and the pig factory in Limavady. There was a recent court case where an Irish environmental NGO raised the issue of there not having been any transboundary consultation on a large industrial farm. It might have been a pig or poultry farm and, if I remember correctly, there was no assessment of the transboundary impacts of ammonia from that site. There have been instances where the law has not been implemented well enough. That was a good example of an environmental NGO stating it had to put its foot down. I am aware of a proposal for a large marine renewables plan for Wales. They could not rule out significant impacts on approximately 20 Irish Natura sites, special protection areas and special areas of conservation and we were concerned as to whether they had been transboundary consultation. In that instance, it turns out there was but we have stay on top of these developments to make sure that people are talking. The important point is to have the mechanisms for communication open, a structure whereby people who know about these matters are supposed to be talking to each other, and that it is important. That is my experience in that regard.