Dr. Eimear Cotter:

Absolutely. We have covered this in previous questions but it is good to be able to state it again. We have seen these trends in increasing nitrates going back to 2012 and 2013. Nitrate levels have been increasing, in particular in the south and the south east. There is no surprise in this. The State of the Environment report is a flagship publication that we put out on the state of Ireland's environment every four years. If we go back to our 2012 report, which is 11 years ago, at that point we were calling out high nitrate levels, in particular pointing out the issues in the Argideen Estuary in terms of nitrate coming from agricultural sources. These are trends that we have seen over many years. As well as the trends we have seen, the nitrate levels are too high to support good water quality around the country.