Ms Mary Gurrie:

I thank the Acting Chair. The local authorities are the main managers for bathing water quality. They manage the beaches, designate certain areas identified as beaches and bathing water areas and these are monitored throughout the bathing water season. The EPA's role is to gather up the information and the data, act in an oversight role of the process and to classify the bathing waters. We publish an annual report on that. Overall, bathing water has been improving last year and this is probably a reflection of some of the investment in wastewater over the years and maybe some improvements in agriculture. Some 97% of our bathing waters meet the minimum standard required but we have problems in some locations with agricultural run-off. After heavy rainfall events there can be a flush of bacteria off the land. There can be wastewater overflows or problems with a wastewater plant. We also have problems with dog fouling in some locations which is causing an impact. What happens on the land and in our wastewater treatment plants impacts directly on our bathing water quality and it needs to be managed. We speak about a catchment management approach. The whole catchment needs to be managed in order to maintain good quality bathing water.