Mr. Brendan Cooney:

I am the senior executive scientist with Wexford County Council. It will take time and there is no two ways about it. This is for the simple reason that our farmers have been doing exactly as they have been asked to do for the past number of decades. They have been looking at one thing only and that is production. They have done an absolutely superb job of it. They were told it is all about production and they are brilliant. The thing is though, to get this they have had to use increasing amounts of fertiliser through nitrates and phosphorus. The nitrates are not conserved and go through the soil quite quickly but they do go into the groundwater and it takes time for them to bleed out. However, the phosphorus is conserved and once it goes on as a fertiliser it is bound to the soil particles and it takes time for it to come off. It could take years or even decades. We have some evidence that what we are doing is starting to have an impact, in that it is not getting worse. We took some samples way back in 2009 when we were looking at this. Some of the small rivers at the time had higher levels of phosphorus than were coming out of the sewage treatment plant in Lady's Island Lake.