Mr. Bill Callanan:

Legally, the regulation is a regulation of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage as the nitrates action programme. I cannot recall in full but I have been in since 2010. During the period proceeding the first nitrates action plan, we had voluntary measures but none with a legal framework, and that is where we fell foul of the EU regulatory requirements of compliance. This is what the 2006 regulation effectively addressed, so we now had a legal requirement in terms of compliance. The control mechanism is through the local authorities in terms of compliance with that but the Department does a lot of inspections in terms of farms, etc., where it aligns with the requirements of the nitrates regulations. The derogation has a specific compliance element where we traditionally inspected 5% of derogation farms. Now 10% of derogation farms are subject to an annual inspection of compliance.