Ms Sinéad O'Brien:

I agree with Dr. McGoff. Building on what she said, it is very easy to fall into discussions about how it is not feasible at this stage and there are only so many years left. However, the water framework directive has a very clear and precise procedure as to how you go about deciding what is feasible to get done between now and 2027. You set out the measures that are needed and then you can do an assessment to work out whether it is technically unfeasible or disproportionately costly. If you can demonstrate that then you can set out either an alternative objective or a time exemption to reaching the objective. That is what is required for every water body. Building on what Dr. McGoff said, that is what we need to see for all water bodies according to the Article 4 assessment required in the directive so we can see how far and how long, as Dr. McGoff said, it is going to take. The plan as is does not even tell us how many water bodies it is planning to get up to good status so we cannot even tell that. There is another report on the LAWPRO website that looks at the areas that are being targeted for action, these priority areas, which are the only ones - the lucky ones, that are getting this targeted approach. In that report it looks as if about three quarters of our waters will get these targeted extra actions from ASSAP and LAWPRO but then there is no assessment as to whether those will work either, so I fully support Dr. McGoff's request that we get full transparency on this. Then we can start having a societal and political discussion about the trade-offs and what Ireland is willing to pay for.