Mr. Denis Drennan:

Ultimately, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage applied for the derogation. The problem is what was signed up to in the interim review of the derogation in 2020 or 2021. I am mixing up the years, but that we would have a mid-term review and the terms and conditions that were signed up to in that were onerous in the sense that denitrification is the problem. As Mr. Murphy said, we have learned from the mistakes. We had another drought in 2021, the advice was different and the results were different. We are learning as we go. Everyone is learning. The catchments programme has shown a huge number of lessons for farmers, scientists and advisers. When the agricultural sustainability, support and advisory programme, ASSAP, was set up, the local authority waters programme, LAWPRO, and the Department of housing said that nitrogen and phosphorous were the main issues in all the catchments. It was soon discovered that sediment was as big an issue as nitrates or phosphorous. Everyone is learning as we go. Measures are being changed. The catchments programme is probably delivering the best results. When something is being monitored every ten minutes you get a fairly accurate picture of what is happening, not happening, working and not working. That is why I made the point that the hydromorphology, soil type and weather events are higher up the priority list from the agricultural catchments programme. Instead of people who may have an agenda saying we need to get rid of cows or a drop in cow numbers will solve the problem, we need to make whichever Department takes it on understand what is causing the problem. That is why we are saying we need a catchment by catchment assessment. It is obvious that derogation farms in Leitrim are not causing the problem because there is only one, unless that farmer is doing something really bad. We need a catchment by catchment assessment to see what the issues are in each catchment and then we can put measures in place to deal with those issues.