Ms Angela Ryan:

They are in some locations. Audit and compliance samples are taken across our water supply on an annual basis. We might have intermittent issues in specific areas, but in general our compliance and audit samples are approximately 99.7 % compliant with the drinking water regulations.

On nitrates, we are looking to work with farming communities on practices in the catchments. Uisce Éireann has been involved in a number of INTERREG Europe funded projects to carry out catchment measures, especially in Border communities and they have been really successful so far. Within those communities, when we have worked with farmers as part of those initiatives we are usually over-subscribed. There is a potential good news story in this. At a local level, we do not see that conflict between agriculture and water services. It is just a case of finding mechanisms and building on them and we can work quite well together. Some of the initiatives we progressed as part of those pilot studies were looking at setback distances, some fencing, small measures like cattle troughs on the land and keeping cattle away from direct access to water bodies, which in turn is good for farmers. It can result in less injury of their livestock and so forth. There are some really good things coming out of European member states on that.