Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their submissions this morning. It is really interesting. I could spend all day talking about this issue.

Professor Whelan said we should look on this on a catchment level, and I think that is important. If one is dealing with any aquatic issue, catchment level is the best way to look at it.

I have a question for IFI. When IFI identified the 257 barriers to be mitigated under the barrier programme, how did it select them? Was a catchment-level approach taken? A number of years ago, Wicklow County Council undertook a barriers project which identified that half of all the rivers in Wicklow were impounded. Therefore, only half of the rivers in County Wicklow are available for migratory species to access, which really is incredible. If there is one thing we could do as a State, it is to work on those barriers. The potential to deal with this is enormous. I merely wonder if IFI has looked. Is IFI conducting a similar analysis to that which was conducted in Wicklow across the different catchments? How were those 257 barriers identified?