Mr. Brendan Cooney:

As Ms Kinsella said and as I believe has been said before, there are many solutions available already. There are the buffers, wetlands, protected urea, multispecies swards and clover incorporation. However, it is a matter of getting somebody to pull things together. When we carried out the Duncannon project, everybody was doing everything in their own different directions. As Mr. Bleasdale was saying, we need somebody to drag all the elements together. That is what we are looking for.

That is when you start to see reductions in things like that. With regard to Teagasc in Johnstown Castle, we were very fortunate to have Johnstown Castle beside us because we often go along and talk to the lads and ladies out in the research centre. We often have discussions. We often go out there and listen to all the things they are doing.

It is out there but it is a matter at this stage of pulling it together. I disagree a little bit with Dr. Bleasdale in that I think there is an element of funding needed. There are no two ways about it. You have to have funding for somebody to manage it and put in some of these measures. They are additional measures to what is in the nitrates action plan. They are built on top of them. We need them, and you need to put in things such as the larger buffer zone because it is unfair to ask the farmers to do all this work and not be compensated for it. It is like where somebody with a business builds a great big shed and we suddenly say they cannot use 10% of after they have invested all of that money in that shed. You are asking the same thing of farmers as well. You cannot ask them to put all these measures, fund this type of thing and have a reduction in their salaries just because we want clean water. Yes, they need clean water and we want clean water but we cannot expect them to have it all on their backs.