Dr. Matthew Crowe:

It is a brilliant question because it encapsulates the challenge everywhere. I mentioned in my opening statement that there are about 4,500 water bodies in Ireland. If you break up the whole country there are 46 catchments and the River Lee would be an example of one of the large catchment areas. They are subdivided into sub-catchments and there are about 600 of them in the country altogether. You are getting more and more down into the local as you go from national down through the catchments. The point about the catchment approach is you are trying to develop this three-dimensional picture of what is going on in an area and the example of the park the Deputy mentioned is replicated everywhere. I lived in Wexford and I could think of places there where there are similar issues. The problem is these issues are never easy to solve because there could be missed connections going in and there could be sewage or overflows.

We need to have these ways of bringing everybody together. When I say "everybody" I mean the forces of the State, including: the local authorities; LAWPRO, which is an entity of the local authorities that has become specialist in the area of water quality and management; and the local communities. This public participation is a huge challenge and there are no easy answers to it. That is why the forum has raised it as such a big issue. It is one of the three big issues we have mentioned. Over the next six years, in the third river basin management plan there is a chance to focus in on that public participation and to work out how to do it better. I do not know what the answers to it are. I have been a members of the Tidy Towns committee in Wexford and stuff like that and it is usually the same people who gather to do things in local areas. It is not easy but it is worth trying to fix.

If you take, for example, the area the Deputy mentioned in Cork, the chances are that there are things that can be done that will improve water quality, nature and biodiversity in the area. Those actions might have benefits for climate change and there could be something to do with flood management going on there as well. There is all that connectivity which you can only get if a lot of local people are involved because they tend to know the place better. It is the same with farming as well because farmers know their farms better than anybody. If you do not talk to the farmer you will not really understand what is going on there either. That is another form of local engagement and participation that we can evolve and develop to a much higher level over the next six years than we have up to now.