Mr. Ian Lumley:

On the waste water issue, we are as concerned about urban and village waste water as about any other form of water or air pollution in terms of environmental and public health impact but this, as Senator Lombard has quite rightly pointed out, is an investment failure going back decades in a country that has experienced a rapid increase in population, which is positive. We have not matched that development with the infrastructure, not just in waste water, but in public transport, local services and other requirements for sustainable communities and a healthy environment.

In 1974, there was a report by Mr. Justice Kenny on the issue of how urban expansion, in particular, would fund improvement in infrastructure. As that fundamental issue was never grappled with, there is land which is being rezoned for urban development and expansion and which is not representing a major capital gain on the part of the landowner, but the investment that is needed to put into waste water improvement is not happening.

Senator Lombard has mentioned Belgooly. It is an issue for our entire coast, whether it is a small-scale discharge on somewhere such as Rosscarbery beach in County Cork, which is a case we were dealing with recently, or the huge problem we have in counties Galway and Dublin in which the expansion of those cities means the existing system is overloaded. They also carry surface drainage, so when there is heavy rainfall, there is overloading into Galway Bay or Dublin Bay and one gets notices that one is not meant to swim and concerns arise, so we must face up to meeting the deficiency we have in water infrastructure. We are ad idemon that. That is a major task for all parties to work together on and we will play a constructive role in advancing this.

However, there is this huge overarching issue with the farming sector. I turn to section 1.5 of our submission, on page 14, where we reference Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, data from the water quality indicator's report which highlighted that agricultural activities are the most significant source of pollution in Irish waters, with a direct impact on 53% of the 1,460 water bodies monitored. The report also outlined that:

nitrate is increasing in nearly half of our river sites. Phosphate levels are also on the rise in a quarter of river sites. This is in sharp contrast to the picture prior to 2015 when only a small proportion of sites had increasing nitrate and phosphate concentrations.

That is directly linked to the agricultural intensification. Look at what happened in the Netherlands when legal actions on nitrates and phosphates in 2018 forced the Government of the Netherlands to intervene in reducing dairy herd and production. We have attached that as an appendix to the document.

In 2019, there were reports in the Irish Examiner and the The Echo about major water pollution incidences in County Cork. The water supply in Macroom was affected and it was not by urban waste water faecal discharge, it was by the use of chemicals to spray rushes for agricultural land reclamation. That is an issue and one which relates to the issue of carbon sequestration in soil. While there is much talk and hyping up of the potential of sequestration in soil, we are continuing to see continuing carbon loss through land drainage and reclamation. Certainly, in these two cases that were reported in County Cork in 2019, it was the chemicals that were used in that land reclamation process that caused a water contamination issue.

Similarly, last year, when the lockdown was lifted during the summer and people wanted to get outdoors to the sea in County Clare, they found that there was a bathing safety notice because of nitrate impact from agricultural sources on bathing beaches. The agricultural sector needs to face up to its responsibility when dealing with the water issue, as much as the major issue we have with urban waste water, whether it is large cities or smaller-scale problems we have around the country. All of this needs decided action and it is in breach of public health, water framework and SDG obligations for clean water.