Dr. Andy Bleasdale:

I thank the Deputy for the question. The science is not in dispute, so it is a waste of time and effort today to discuss the science. It is now more about a call for action arising from the science , as presented through the CLEAR report, for which we were happy to cosponsor the funding.

To the extent that we know how things work: it is through the localisation of issues and their resolution through co-ordination and integration at site level. We can give lots of examples of where that worked in the past, for example, in the Burren and in Duncannon for the corncrake and for breeding waders, among others. We can do this. It is a mistake to focus on a fund or the lack of funding. Funding is not the issue; it is about the co-ordination and integration piece. A whole series of players have been mentioned, such as the Department of agriculture, the water division of our Department, LAWPRO, ourselves, Wexford County Council and the EPA. There are many schemes. We could multiply the number of bodies by three or four for the schemes that exist to resolve these problems. What we now need to do is to work in partnership and be given a mandate to so do to resolve and regularise the problems that exist in Lady's Island Lake. It would be difficult to progress even if the co-ordination were to happen tomorrow. Funding is not the issue. We are happy to bring our funding to bear through the SNaP project and in co-ordination with Wexford County Council and the Department of agriculture. In the absence of co-ordination, we will go back into our individual silos and reporting to the Commission on the poor status of habitats, either at that site or nationally. We have submitted reports to the Commission on it. The question is what we do with that reporting. The science can do all the science and monitoring in the world but unless we act on it, it will be an exercise in futility. If there is a mandate coming from today to build that capacity to co-ordinate and integrate and to build the existing schemes to adapt to the needs of Lady's Island Lake, we will be on the road to success.