Noel McCarthy (Cork East, Fine Gael)

I thank the Chair for facilitating me and other Oireachtas Members who are not on this committee. I welcome all of our guests today. I live in Fermoy and the Blackwater is very important to us. When the incident happened, people in Fermoy were very upset and were also very taken aback by the lack of information being made available. That is still the situation at the moment and our guests cannot deny that. As I have been sitting here listening to 12 of my colleagues speaking, I have been asking myself where we went wrong.

We have four agencies here today and we still do not know what happened on the day of 11 August. I want to go back to something Mr. Fox said. He said that he thought it happened 72 hours before that, or three full days before it was reported on 11 or 12 August. Is it the case that we are lacking an adequate monitoring system? I want to praise the staff and I agree, no doubt about it, that they are very upset over it. I can see that but can we learn any lessons from this? If this discharge happened three days before it was detected on 11 or 12 August, when the other agencies were contacted, how did we miss it for three days? Is there monitoring constantly going on, every day, by Cork County Council? Does the council have staff out there doing that? Does the IFI have staff out there doing that? Who is doing the monitoring? Is there someone out there who checks the river in different locations every day? That is a very important question and we need to know the answer. Those three days caused the problem we have. Fish started to die, the fishermen saw it and it was reported to all of the different agencies but why did we not pick that discharge up before then? Mr. Fox said that it was very hard to find and I understand that but surely we have someone in place.

When I spoke in the Dáil last Thursday week, I said that this was the worst pollution incident in any river in this country. It is absolutely terrible. I heard Mr. Arnold's opening statement. I also met him and his associates and heard about the impact this has had on their livelihoods and businesses. The River Blackwater has given recreational enjoyment to so many people, whether fishing, rowing or other activities, for many years. To hear someone like Mr. Arnold say that it could take ten years for the river to recover is so concerning.

One of the things the general public is asking us as public representatives is whether there is a cover-up here. I am not being disrespectful of anyone by saying that but that is what is being said. People point to the lack of a response and any action and ask how we missed this.

Finally, what can we learn from this? We have four agencies in front of us at this committee today and we still have the same questions. We have no solution for how it happened and it is very concerning.