Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is a no-brainer, to be honest, in that, in particular when looking at a regional spatial strategy, we have to look at the state of water quality in a region. As Deputy O'Callaghan has already indicated, we are not performing well in this area. The poor state of water quality is pretty tragic given what the natural state of this country should be and how it is perceived by many people as being a kind of haven of nature. For example, there is blue-green algae in the Blessington reservoir.

These are very serious issues and ones for which we are being hauled over the coals. They also tie in with afforestation policy, the need for more diversity and a move away from a monocultural forestry model, which contributes to this sort of degradation of water quality. It is an urgent imperative for us to restore water quality from all sorts of points of view. It would make sense that it would be part of the considerations at a regional planning level.