Mr. Brendan Cooney:

An awful lot more restrictions have been made. The most recent set of results we took were earlier this year and they indicate the problems coming out of the streams are not getting any worse. It is possible that whatever was put in there in recent years is at least stopping but we do not know yet. If we speak to anybody in the Department of agriculture, Teagasc or the EPA they say there is a backlog of stuff in the environment. The nitrates and phosphorus are in there and they have to come out of the system at this stage. I feel as though I am speaking for the IFA but this is the science of it. There is now a need to let it settle for a while. I understand where people are coming from, in that they need to start getting things done quickly, but the amount of nutrients that have been put in there will take time to come out. It could take years. When we go to CAP and make demands, we could demand that more stringent measures be put on farmers but they might not really be needed just yet.