Dr. Elaine McGoff:

Deputy Ó Broin asked difficult questions about why water quality was still declining and what our one request would be. Water quality is declining because we essentially do not have anyone cracking the whip. There is no one ensuring that everyone is pulling his or her weight. There is no accountability, it is a piecemeal approach and there is no integrated catchment management. We need to determine what can happen in a specific catchment, how much it can take, how much forestry there should be and the sensitive areas where there should be no development. There is no way of doing that other than by taking a catchment approach. The river is an expression of what is happening across a much larger land area and the two cannot be disentangled. You cannot just address one issue. Instead, you have to address everything. There is a known approach, namely, integrated catchment management, but we are not good at doing that in Ireland. It is where we need to be moving.

That brings me to the one recommendation I would ask the committee to make. Choosing one is difficult, as I could probably list hundreds, but I will settle for one. We need an integrated catchment management approach with clear accountability – someone cracking the whip and keeping an eye on things – and transparency. We need to know what we have to do to reach our water framework directive objectives. We need a GAP analysis. This is not just about agriculture. Urban waste water treatment is a disaster. We have raw sewage going into our seas and there is no clear indication as to when that will be addressed. There needs to be clear accountability, an integrated catchment management plan and transparency. I am not sure as to whether all of that would fit within one request-----