Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank those members who declared an interest because it is beneficial to this committee to have people with such farming experience and from a farming background. It is a complex area and the more I engage with farmers, the more I learn about it. I do not think members having an interest is a difficulty. Where it does become a difficulty is when people point a finger at an independent scientific agency such as the EPA and infer that it is somehow political. That is not an acceptable statement for anybody to make, regardless of their experience and background.

I have had an interest in water quality for a long time. My interest is in having good, clean water in our rivers, lakes, estuaries and groundwater because that is from where we extract our water for drinking and where a lot of recreation takes place. A lot of people depend on having good water quality and our health and safety must always be foremost. That is where my interest in this area comes from.

Notwithstanding that, I fully understand the shock, disappointment and anger among the farming community. I engaged with farmers and they want to know how this happened and why it is happening now. I thank the Minister because he has been very straight in his answers. He has been honest and open in setting out exactly the reasons this is happening and must be done in this manner.

He has not led people on a merry dance that we will be able to get around this or do something and that we do not need to worry about it because we have had this for far too long in many areas such as government, water quality, policy direction for farmers and climate action. How did we get here and what is the pathway to allow farmers to have confidence in their job of producing excellent food over the next five, ten or 20 years? Every business needs to know that. Businesses do not want to know there will be chopping and changing along the way.

This is a 1991 directive. The first nitrates action programme was in 2006. Why was there a gap between 1991 and 2006 when it came to action or were there actions that predated the nitrates action plans?