Dr. Cathal Gallagher:

"Yes" is the answer and we need to do more of that because we are just seeing one direction of travel in that regard. We have been doing some work on climate mitigation, which is what we call it for fish, and we are looking at exactly the question the Deputy has asked, that is, how one would address the future of climate impact and build some areas of refuge to control the temperature, and tree planting is one of those. To support that, we have done some research which looks at some of the impacts of it. Funnily enough, it is not just the impact on water temperature but work in the riparian corridor can change the physical structure of the catchment itself. That is the latest work we have done on an EU-funded project called the CatchmentCARE Project. We have a document, which looks at that. It is called Riverine Restoration in an era of climate change. We are trying to build on that. At the moment, we have over 300 monitoring stations and we have 12 index catchments. The difficulty in Ireland, even with its size, is that what is happening in the climate in rivers varies between the west and east coast of Ireland. We are working with four different climate models. As Professor Whelan correctly said, the climate impact is not just what we normally think about, which is drought. We have seen elements of drought for long periods but it is also elements of flooding and of high water for a sustained period. All of that is causing an impact.

Then one considers what one can do about that. It is not just tree planting but it is what one does in the upper catchment and with the drainage structure that has been in agriculture over those years, to attenuate the water and to control the temperatures.

There are many different measures, along with tree planting, but it has proven to be successful.