Dr. Eimear Cotter:

I will start with the existing licensing regime. There is a distinction between existing and new licences, but I will first highlight how the requirements of existing and new abstractions are set out in this scheme, namely, that those with greater than 25 cu. m will need to register on the water abstraction register and those with greater then 250 cu. m will fall under our cumulative assessment in order to determine whether they cause a significant impact. That will in then determine whether they need a licence. Those at the larger end will come straight to the EPA for a licence.

The assessment that we will do under head 10 will include existing abstractions. If they are found to require EPA licences, we will engage with them and they will come to us for an EIA. We can impose conditions within the licence to ensure that existing abstractions are not causing any environmental impact. Under head 13, there is a facility or scope built into the licensing regime, as we envisage it, to grant the ability to impose conditions in licences to ensure that there are no environmental impacts.

The register already has a statutory footing under the 2018 regulations. They will be repealed and brought into the Bill once enacted. We have 1,583 registrations, covering 95% of the total volume of water abstraction that we expect to have registered, but there are still some outstanding sectors that we need to continue to work with to promote compliance. We have been engaging with the representative bodies and Departments in order to ensure that all of those with a requirement to register are abiding by their obligations.

From our point of view, enforcement will be on the licensing side. Once we have the licensing regime in place and are issuing licences, their enforcement will be done through the EPA's office of environmental enforcement. We will use our standard method of enforcement, that is, a risk-based approach.