Mr. Se?n Laffey:

Yes, absolutely. There is a national pesticides action group of which Irish Water is a member. From memory, there are representatives from the EPA; the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; the HSE; Teagasc; the local authority waters programme, LAWPRO; and the environmental sections of some local authorities. The group takes a combined catchment-based approach to managing pesticides. Best international practice has been around the fact that while pesticides and herbicides are used for agriculture, they are a useful tool and will be used going into the future. The best way to minimise the impact they have on water bodies is through catchment management and we are focused on that.

The actions we are taking are up there with the best international practices. The farmers with whom we have engaged and discussed this have been very receptive in trying out new methods. They get the impact - for good or for bad - they can have on the environment and they want to be a force for good. We have gone from spraying herbicides to setting up weed lickers, which means that rather than spraying crops, a wet cloth is used to touch various plants and kill them. We are making progress in that space. There will always be some level of those chemicals in the environment because we are putting them into the environment, but the solution will be to work with the manufacturers of these compounds to make sure they also look at the long-term impact of what they are manufacturing on the environment and they produce herbicides and pesticides that do a job but break down nearly immediately once they hit the soil.