Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have about a minute left for myself. There are many more questions we want to ask and there will be further work for the committee on this. We did not get the opportunity, I do not think, to go too far into the environmental impact assessment of existing abstractions which would require licensing. That is an area we need to look into further.

On the registration process, we seem to have established that it is quite a fairly simple process to register. It is not hugely onerous, and there seems to be nothing to fear by registering. I am only making this as a suggestion, but if we were to reduce the threshold to register so that it was only 10 cu. m for abstraction, it would provide a greater body of knowledge on what is a finite resource if at some point resources were to be provided to examine the cumulative impact of all of that and to carry out impact assessments.

At least, we would gather a good baseline of where abstractions are. That is what I take from today's discussion. Every abstraction, no matter how small, has some type of impact on that watercourse. The task is to determine what is significant and the cumulative impact of a large number of small abstractions.

I thank the witnesses from SWAN and the EPA for their attendance. This meeting has provided us with a lot more information and added to our knowledge in respect of our task in scrutinising this legislation. I thank the witnesses and members for their time and co-operation.

The committee will adjourn until 10.20 a.m. on Tuesday, 10 November 2020 when we will meet in private session via Teams, followed by a public session at 11 a.m. in committee room 2.