Ms Laura Burke:

Absolutely. We are in complete agreement on that. To be clear, our report is to "Ireland Inc.". The report on urban wastewater treatment is a national report. It feeds into the Department, but it is not addressed to the Department as its only audience.

With regard to pointing out the failures, yes, the role of the agency is to describe the situation based on scientific evidence. We have highlighted non-compliance with the urban wastewater treatment directive. As I have indicated, more recently we have highlighted that although there has been significant progress on the drinking water side of things, we have seen less progress on urban wastewater and the pace of investment is not fast enough.