Mr. Laurence Fallon:

I thank the Senator for her contribution. On her direct question about the rise in the waters, perhaps for the benefit of those who are not that close to the lake, I might give what I would call the base level of the lake as it should be at the month of October. Normally, it would be 63.5 m above sea level on an Ordnance Survey map. In 2016, it was 66.8 m, in 2017 it was 65.7 m, in 2018 was 65.75 m, in 2019 it was 66 m , in 2020 it was 67 m, in 2021 it was 67 m and in 2022 it was 66 m. The bottom line is that the turlough has never emptied and is now on balance 3 m higher going into each winter than it should have been before 2015. Just to give the Senator a measure of how fast it can change, the turlough has the capacity to go down at about 3 in. or 75 mm a week in very dry weather but in the last week, it has risen by 100 mm. It can rise much faster than it goes down. It is very worrying that it is rising just now at the rate it is rising, because land is waterlogged across our part of the country as well.

I will make the point that this is as serious from an environmental point of view as it is from economic and family hardship points of view. Everything in the lake is dead; nothing is alive. To give an example of how serious the death of the lake it is, there were 200 acres of reed beds, which are most sturdy and hard and hard-killed. They all have died because of the permanent water in the lake, which is not allowing anything to happen. All birds have left, including whooper swans. We had a lovely flock of eaglets that came about ten years ago. They rested in the trees on the islands. The islands are flooded, the trees dead and they have left as well.