Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 October 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Nitrates Directive, Water Quality and Pollution: Discussion

Dr. Eimear Cotter:

I can take the second part of that and Ms Gurrie will take the first question. To be clear, we do not input into the writing of the policy. Ours is a scientific, technical organisation and it provides the information about what is happening in the environment by looking at the trends and where the pressures are, and providing that information to the policymakers, who make their decisions on that basis. We are not involved in writing the policy. To get into the details of the measures is not where our expertise lies. We are looking at what is happening in the environment. We will provide that information to any decision-maker that needs it, but it is the experts in the agricultural sector, and perhaps the committee's discussion afterwards, that would be more focused on the measures. They are the ones who know which measures are going to be the most effective in delivering the outcomes in the environment that we will be tracking and that we want to see.