Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will try to keep to direct questions because it has been a pretty long session and, again, some of the questions have been clarified. I thank the three ladies for their engagement today.

I looked at Dr. Deakin's job description; she is described as a senior catchment scientist. Does that take her all over the country and does it allow her to engage with communities on the work she is doing?

We have a significant number of group water schemes throughout the country. They do wonderful work on water quality programmes. In fact, they are now being funded by the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Do the witnesses engage with those schemes? Their work is sometimes not recognised in the media. They are doing outstanding work on the quality of water schemes and they are all over rural Ireland.

Are the witnesses aware of other projects on herbicide contamination, again involving group water schemes? In some parts of the country, herbicide detection has halved on certain streams and rivers because of a group water scheme that includes local farmers. It simply involves replacement certification provided gratis by the group for water schemes with individual farmers meeting the costs of any additional parts that are required and servicing the boom sprayers. This fantastic work is going on under our noses in rural Ireland. It would make perfect sense - maybe this happens - to have an engagement between those groups and the EPA. I commend the EPA on its work because it has been very important in parts of the country in speaking up on issues that were wrong, but is that engagement there? Does it happen and is the EPA aware of those programmes? I understand more funding is to be provided for them.