Ms Catherine McManus:

In other countries, there are requirements for environmental monitoring and reporting in the sector, as is the case in Ireland. We probably have the longest data sets for the marine environment of any sector. In our case, we have data sets, for example for certain places in Donegal, going back to the early 1980s. Nobody else has that information or data. We have everything on water quality and benthic impacts. That information is available and furnished to our regulatory authority. More could be made of that information. It could be joined up with other agencies but we hold the longest continuous data set. We know what the environment was like 30 or 40 years ago. We know what it is like today and we know what the impacts are or are not.