Ms Mary Cahill:

We have not looked into amending by-laws. At the moment, this is just the policy for Wicklow County Council on public lands, so we have not gone down that road yet.

I do not have numbers for those who have attended the course. Anyone who would be applying it in municipal districts attended a three-day course, as I said in my statement. It has not been run since 2016. When I started asking questions about it, everybody said “Yes, I need to do that”, but I do not want to send all of the outdoor staff on a three-day course to be certified to apply glyphosate when we are trying to reduce the application of it. There is a bit of a Catch-22 there. I have agreed with the municipal district engineers that each district would send two people on that three-day certification course so they have someone who can apply it where it is needed for invasive species and so on. This is where we need another course for the rest of the staff for awareness and so we do not have any rogue staff.