Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

My first question is for the officials from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. At the previous session, a very strong claim was made about wastewater. It has been addressed already but I will give the officials an opportunity to address it again. It was claimed that urban wastewater might be significantly contributing to the water quality issues we have. I am hearing that is the case to a certain extent but agricultural practices are responsible to a greater extent and, therefore, the fifth nitrates action programme is necessary. The programme is necessary because the deterioration in water quality obviously presents a risk to the environment and water courses, but also a risk to agriculture. It is certainly not good for the Irish agriculture sector if the country gets a label as having polluted water. Our guests will probably agree with that. I commend the efforts of everybody to try to turn this around.

We should be alarmed because we are hearing today from officials in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, as we have heard previously, that we are probably way off course as regards our commitments under the EU water framework directive to restore our water quality to satisfactory conditions by 2027. That is only five years away. The industry lobby does not have much of a mind to that. It would say we should go there gently and slowly. If we adopt that approach, it will certainly not take us there by 2027. We simply have to find a way of restoring our water quality to meet our EU obligations, notwithstanding that we also want better water quality for many good reasons.

My principal question is, given the likelihood that we will not achieve the obligations set out in the water framework directive and given that all the nitrates action programmes to date have not been effective, where do we go from here? The fifth nitrates programme is even more demanding for farmers because previous programmes have not been effective and because it is more demanding, we probably have less confidence that this programme will be effective. We all need to be reassured that we really are turning the tanker around. I am interested in the witnesses' views on the role of enforcement. It was planned that 5% of farms would be inspected and I understand that figure will increase to 10% in this programme. Is that enough? Even if we are monitoring 10% of farms, are we really capturing the problem?

A strong claim was made by our previous guests that it will take between 18 and 24 months to see a change in water quality based on the programme.

I would like the experts from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, in particular, to comment on that. I have dipped into the issue and have done some research. From what I have read, I understand that we can see results very quickly from changing certain practices, particularly with regard to the nitrate levels in the water. I would like to give the experts from the Department the opportunity to address that claim that was made very strongly by the representatives of the ICMSA in the previous session.

I wish to raise the issue of the rhetoric around the family farm. Perhaps the officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine have picked up on it. It was mentioned by Deputy Fitzmaurice, who has left now. Indeed, I believe Mr. Callanan himself said that farms are family farms. Do we need a proper definition of the term? We need to have an honest discussion here. If we are using that kind of emotive language, and saying that family farms are under threat because of the nitrates action programme, it is really not helpful. The reality is that a small number of farmers are derogation farmers, and I absolutely accept that most of those are not the problem. I find the rhetoric unhelpful. Perhaps there is an argument for really defining the term. While we do want to have a sustainable sector and to support family farms, we need to be very clear about what that means.