Mr. Seán Laffey:

We are seeing the impacts of climate change at the moment. I think it was Storm Bert when a treatment plant flooded in Kerry, and the river beat the old record by 800 mm, which was absolutely unheard of. We are working closely with Dr. Conor Murphy in Maynooth and we are working closely with the European studies on climate change. What it says for Ireland is it will be wetter in the winter and drier in the summer. It will be wetter in the west and drier in the east. There will be a chance of river and coastal flooding. The other thing, which is of significant concern to us, is that the same amount of rain will fall, but the intensity of the rainfall will be much greater.

I forgot which Deputy mentioned it. Our supplies are run of river. A total of 85% of our water comes from run of river. If the same amount of rain falls in a lesser time, it will run off the land into the rivers and out to sea before it has time to reach the groundwater. During the summer, a lot of the rivers in Ireland are supplied by groundwater. We are seeing future challenges in supplying communities in mountainous areas like Kerry, Wicklow and parts of Mayo and Donegal with water.

The corollary of that is we also expect the environment to take our treated wastewater. As part of that, we must have assimilative capacity in those rivers. If the rivers are running very low because of climate change and we are discharging the same amount of treated effluent into the river, it could end up polluting the river or killing some of the wildlife or else we have to adapt or adjust the treatment plant to produce a higher standard effluent so that is more money. Yes, it is coming.