Dr. Jenny Deakin:

Our role as a national agency is to look at the science on a national basis. In order to help us do that, we pull in information from all sorts of public bodies that are nationally and regionally based.

That includes local authorities, for example, fisheries and parks and wildlife etc. We do not have a role in engaging directly with communities. That role is firmly served by the local authorities' waters programme, LAWPRO, of which members may be aware. There are a number of community water officers who engage with communities. We then get the findings from that work back through our engagement with LAWPRO and the local authorities that way. We hear the feedback but it is second-hand straight from the communities.

We have direct engagement with the group water scheme sector. We sit on a number of committees together, for example, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has one on drinking water source protection, which is a new requirement under the drinking water directive whereby we start to protect water for drinking in the catchment rather than just going straight for the treatment at the source. As the Deputy rightly said, the group water scheme sector is doing exemplary work in that regard in those catchment areas. They have some great plans and programmes, particularly the one around the bees, with which I am sure members are familiar. It is bringing fantastic results for them. We are aware that great work is going on and we can see that demonstrated in the results.