Dr. Matthew Crowe:

We are delighted to be here to talk to the committee about the draft river basin management plan. I am the chair of the Water Forum. I was appointed in the last couple of months. I am here with Mr. Dónal Purcell and Dr. Triona McGrath, who are members of the secretariat that supports the forum.

The forum was established on a statutory basis in 2018 to provide stakeholder input and advice to policy development. There are 25 members, representing a broad range of sectors and views on water issues. The forum has statutory advisory roles relating to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Irish Water, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and the Water Policy Advisory Committee. I acknowledge the previous chair of the Water Forum, Tom Collins, for his many years of public service in matters relating to water, Connie Rochford for chairing the forum between Tom leaving and my recent appointment, and Barry Dean from the National Federation of Group Water Schemes for chairing the forum's water services committee. I thank all the members, past and present, for their contributions, time and public service, and the forum's secretariat for all its support.

Regarding the hearings today, we welcome that the committee is taking such an interest in the draft river basin management plan. The next six years will be crucial. This is the third cycle. The water framework directive was agreed more than 20 years ago. Two six-year cycles have already taken place in that period. Many problems remain to be solved. Over the next six years, we need to step up the level of ambition and rate of progress and start to see radical improvements in water quality, management of our precious water resources, and in the area of water services. Implementation is key. We can have a great plan, but if it is not implemented, it means nothing in the longer term.

I refer to the main recommendations of the forum. The document we prepared runs to nearly 60 pages, with 103 recommendations altogether. The committee will be glad to hear that I will not go through them all today. They represent the agreed position of members following much engagement with the Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Local Authority Waters Programme, and the agricultural sustainability support and advisory programme, which is here today too, and many other organisations. They cover all the relevant areas, including governance, monitoring, evaluation, financing, public participation, and the key pressures on water. In the next minute or two, I will refer to an outcomes-based approach, governance and finance, public participation, and pressures. We are delighted to get into more detail during the discussion.

We recommend an outcomes-based approach with targeted measures, metrics and key performance indicators for every water body in Ireland. There are about 4,500 in total. Each water body either needs to be protected, if already of good status, or improved if at poor or moderate status. Detail is provided in the submission about how this could be designed. The forum is happy to engage with whoever it needs to about the development of such an approach.

Regarding governance and financing, we recommend a number of reforms to governance structures to help to strengthen the overall governance framework. These include the inclusion of a full-time project management secretariat, more structured engagement between the three governance tiers, and opportunities for engagement between the forum and each tier. We also recommend quickly establishing the proposed interdepartmental group to develop a comprehensive financial strategy to support implementation of climate, water and biodiversity objectives in an integrated and joined-up fashion. I hope, during the course of the hearing, that we get to talk about the multiple benefits issue, with water, climate and nature being interconnected.

We recommend a new national approach to meaningful public participation to help to radically improve how the public participates in the implementation of the water framework directive, leading to a vision and action plan for meaningful public participation in each of the 46 catchment areas in Ireland. The forum can assist in the development and implementation of such an approach. As I have learned in the course of the two months I have been involved in the forum, it has a lot of expertise relating to public participation and engagement. We can draw on that over the next six years.

We have sections about all the pressures in the detailed submission. We want to make a couple of general points first. We need much better alignment of sectoral policies and strategies with the objectives of the water framework directive across all sectors that can have either a negative or positive impact on water. Many sectoral activities, such as new developments, flood relief works, and so on, also need robust water framework assessments to ensure they do not have a negative impact on water. Looking at the history of this, it has taken Ireland a long time to figure out how to work through the legislation so that a directive such as the water framework directive appears regularly when looking at new planning developments and so on.

That is something that we need to deal with in the course of the next plan. There is much to be done, but we are building on a lot of progress, in particular in the most recent truncated cycle, which was just for a four-year period. I again thank the committee members for inviting us here. We are very happy to answer any questions they may have and to provide any additional follow-up information we might be able to give to the committee from the forum while it is carrying out its deliberations.