Dr. M?che?l ? Cinn?ide:

To take up what Mr. O'Donnell said, it was a very good question about what the rivers would be like. From my experience working in the EPA, where I was in charge of the water team for several years, nature has the capacity to recover if allowed to. That is true regarding water. As Mr. O'Donnell said, it is not just about controlling point source pollution. The actions of the Department of agriculture and Irish Water regarding pollution, the Arterial Drainage Act, which I will come back to, the OPW and Inland Fisheries Ireland were all seen as key in the citizens' assembly recommendations on fresh water. Going back to Deputy Kenny's question, the statistics are very clear from the EPA - the number one source of pressure on water quality is agriculture. About 60% of at-risk areas are at risk because of pressure from agriculture. The next biggest source is hydromorphology, which is hard to get across to the public but it means drainage.

Again, one of the two main sources of harmful drainage actions is farming, where they put in drains that are trying to dry up wetlands. The second goes back to arterial drainage. There are certainly issues there that need to be addressed.

I turn to the broader question about some of the recommendations or concerns. If I may briefly return to the national biodiversity action plan, the committee should have a copy of it before it concludes its work. I understand it was signed off by the Cabinet last month. I know we heard last week that it will not be published until January, but it is finished and ready. The draft available on the website is a previous draft. I will mark the committee's card on the three concerns I have when I look at that. The first is the language. It is written in the same language as the previous three biodiversity action plans, which is the language of the public sector, of which I have been a member for many years. It is to explore, to enact, to continue, to review, to examine, to identify, to assess and to build capacity. There are 180 actions, and it is all that kind of language. However, going back to Deputy Bruton's question the last day, the second issue is that it does not have any targets. By comparison, the climate action committee, with which this committee is familiar, has pretty clear targets for the country that need to be met. That means action that changes the impacts on the environment.

In a similar way, if you compare it with water, the water framework directive and river basin management plan have targets for the country that have to be met at local and national level. When the committee asked about targets the last day, the answer was that this is a high level plan and does not have geographical targets. If that is the case, then they very much remain incremental actions within organisations in the State sector. My third concern is when you look at the people responsible for these steps. The national biodiversity action plan has between approximately 160 and 180 actions, and it says who is responsible for all of them. It is in the draft. More than 80 of them out of 160 are the responsibility of the Department of housing - its own Department. That is fine. There are also the local authorities, the biodiversity action plan and the Heritage Council. If you consider the question of the locus of control, the citizens' assembly wanted a whole-of-government transformational approach to biodiversity. The answer we got the last day we were here was to leave it with you. We were told it was there, and more than 100 of the recommendations would be taken care of in the biodiversity action plan. First, they are not addressed in the same rigorous and robust way. Second, the locus of control is all within one Department - the Department of housing, which is doing a great job. It is responsible for the biodiversity action plan, the river basin management plan and the Marine Protected Areas Bill, and it will have a key role in nature restoration in four years' time.

Where does that leave the rest of Government with regard to biodiversity? It is not in as strong a place as the citizens would want. That is why I will go back to the other recommendations. When the committee is making its judgment on this, it needs to go further than what is already in the pipeline. It needs to say that National Parks and Wildlife Service is doing a great job in a particular area, but must strengthen its enforcement powers. On the previous occasion, we heard that everybody is responsible for enforcement. The committee saw the statistics from us, namely, 28,000 inspections per annum. There is a team of more than 150 people in IFI who do enforcement work. I worked in the EPA for ten years. It has 454 staff. The number of people working full time on enforcement and nothing else is 127. That is 30% of the EPA and more than 50% of IFI. You need to specialise and you need to focus and gather intelligence. Questions needed to be asked about why that is not being done in the nature restoration agency. Reform in Coillte, the OPW and Bord na Móna, and constitutional change, will strengthen what will, as a baseline, be the biodiversity action plan. I apologise for the long answer.