Dr. Eimear Cotter:

The Deputy is talking about Teagasc's agricultural catchments programme which measures over a limited area down in Timoleague. We are very aware of what they are doing there. Dr. Deakin sits on the steering committee of the programme and has been in good contact with Teagasc on this. Broadly, we are seeing the same trends in our monitoring in the region which is more extensive. We monitor over a much larger area compared to the agriculture catchment programme but broadly we are seeing the same trends except that Teagasc saw nitrate levels going down in 2022 and we do not see that. We saw them increase in 2022. We really need to understand what is happening in that programme. It is positive; we would really like to see the result replicated on a wider basis but as I say, we are not seeing it in our data. Hopefully it will continue into 2023. The practices in place in the catchment in the programme will be replicated throughout the area.