Mr. Ted Massey:

Yes. Since 2008 the State has invested heavily in water quality monitory through the ACP, a research programme led by Teagasc. It looks at six agricultural catchments around the country. They are geographically dispersed and represent different soil types and different climates or weather. What the catchments have in common is they are all reasonably intensively farmed. They are representative of derogation farms in the case of the Timoleague catchment, of tillage land in the Castledockrell catchment in Wexford and then there is a further catchment in that county on heavier soil in Ballycanew. That illustrates the range of issues being considered. Within those catchments, samples are being taken every ten minutes in an automated process and gathering a lot of information. Teagasc is looking at the practices and working closely with the farmers as well. These are catchments that were specially selected. They are reasonably small catchments as well, so Teagasc could engage all farmers and get a good handle on what is happening at farm level so it could trace that through to look at the quality of both the groundwater on farms and the water quality in the streams leaving the catchment as well. There is a lot of data there. That feeds into our process as well. It feeds into our reports to the Commission every year and into our work on developing new measures as well, and developing overall policy.