Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their submissions and presentations. I apologise for not being able to attend the full session. Unfortunately, I had a number of conflicting meetings. Do not worry, though, as we will ensure we catch up with all of it afterwards.

I am sure the Chair outlined the purpose of this meeting at the start, but I wish to emphasise that we are keen as a committee to have some kind of correspondence as part of the public consultation, not necessarily to make detailed observations that the witnesses' organisations make, given that they are far more expert in this area than we are, but to set out high-level priorities that we could make as politicians with some responsibility to track these issues. I raise this point because some of my questions will relate directly to the work the committee will do after the witnesses have left and we consider what kind of submission we would like to make. Notwithstanding how technical all of this is and the large volume of documents the witnesses have to go through, we believe this committee has an important role in contributing to the debate. The witnesses' contributions are part of helping to inform us and bring us up to speed.

When reading the submissions beforehand, particularly SWAN's opening statement, two points jumped out at me. This is our third river basin management plan. A large amount of work has been done and there is far greater organisation and co-ordination, more targets, regulations and staff, etc. In many respects, though, some of the key indicators are not moving in the right direction. This is a concern. If we want to ensure the third plan is better than the second and first, we have to understand with the benefit of hindsight what went wrong, what could have been done better and what improvements the final plan could make.

Ms O'Brien outlined the figures. Some of them make for stark reading. Unlike the Chair's area, there are active groups in my constituency that are concerned about the wellbeing of the River Camac. The Friends of the Camac are key in that respect. Regardless of whether we are getting representations, though, it is incumbent on us to respond if we are given this kind of information.

My first question is for Ms O'Brien. There is a clear implication in her submission that SWAN does not believe the draft plan is fully compliant with the water framework directive. That is alarming. It is not the first time we have heard such concerns from organisations when dealing with other Government plans. I invite Ms O'Brien to provide us with more detail on where she believes the plan is not compliant so that we can give that our attention in private session.

I was aware, albeit in a limited fashion, that there were new structures and additional staff in the EPA and in the local authority sector to try to deal with some of the water quality issues. In key areas, though, water quality has declined. I will ask an open question of everyone. With an eye to the kinds of recommendation we could make to the public consultation, why have key aspects of water quality declined despite the additional resources and additional staff and what can we do to counteract it?

I get the sense from what I have heard so far that policy cohesion is a challenge. There are many agencies and organisations involved as well as complex issues in terms of European law and Irish law and policy. Do we have a sufficient level of policy coherence? What could we do to try to make policy more coherent across the various actors?

I will next ask something that is a bit of a cheat question we ask whenever witnesses appear before us. If they were writing our submission or advising us on it and they could only suggest one priority they wanted us to name, what would it be?

I am interested in the nitrates matter. I accept the complexities of it. Mr. Burgess and Dr. O'Mara made a strong case for those and no one present would disagree, but we have been increasing our overall nitrates usage in recent years as part of the increase in the size of the herd. Even with a more nuanced approached, good, strong and targeted regulation and good advice, for how long would that be compatible? If the herd keeps increasing or is maintained at its current level, and given the level of nitrates, be that spill-off from the nitrates themselves or, as the witnesses pointed out in their submission, direct discharge from urine into the soil, will we be able to meet the targets and what will we have to do to achieve them?

Perhaps Ms O'Brien will reply first to my question on compliance with the water framework directive.