Mr. Gerard O'Leary:

The majority of our inspections are unannounced. While there may be reasons to have announced visits on occasion, the vast majority of inspections are unannounced.

Senator Landy asked a question on the 1,374 inspections. This figure is broken down into 844 inspections in the area of industry and waste and 530 monitoring visits, which are specifically for taking water samples. I would be pleased to provide a written response to the Senator's question if it would help create a better understanding of the issue. The definition of inspection varies across Europe. In terms of the industrial emissions directive, from memory, a site visit is deemed to be an on-site visit and requires that activities take place once every three years. As we indicated, we rank sites by risk. I would love to be able to have the plan with which we start each year implemented in full but we have priorities. Approximately 40% of our activities are unscheduled, for example, we must respond if a fire breaks out at the Kerdiffstown site. We must be able to adjust to complaints and so forth.

As I indicated, we have drawn up ten priority sites on the basis of intelligence and complaints and these sites consume 14% of our time. If I do not respond specifically to Senator Landy's questions on any matter, I will be pleased to provide him with a written response.

In terms of air emissions, we published a report on this issue only two weeks ago. The key pages list all of the inspections we carried out. In 2013, for example, there were 114 air emissions inspections. The trend in other countries has been to cease the practice of carrying out spot checks and establish instead controls by way of continuous monitors. This is highly specialised work which is contracted out. For the most part, however, inspections are done by our staff, whether taking water samples or making site visits for audits. The inspections are graded depending on risk. Again, I would be happy to provide this information in writing.