Mr. Barry Fox:

The nature of these types of events - deleterious discharges or point sources of pollution, as they are called - is such that unless we are on site while the discharge is occurring, we cannot possibly link it to an offender. There are going to be instances where we cannot actually detect the offender and where they have actually caused the discharge. That is just the reality at the moment. There are 1,200 rivers and over 4,000 lakes in Ireland. We cannot be everywhere at once. This is reactionary. An event happens to which we have to react.