Ms Oonagh Duggan:

We are not working as closely on water quality as An Taisce is. Indirectly, we are because of our waterbirds and, as we said, the winter stubble, so it is really important to us as well.

We talk to a lot of farmers and one thing we definitely see is that farmers really want to make sure they are not affecting water quality, but sometimes they are scrambling to look for the measure that will work for us here. We are hearing that it is not so straightforward. From a bird conservation perspective, we work closely at farm level to see what measures would be best for birds. Bespoke on-farm measures work well. If you scale it up or look at a catchment and work with farms in the catchment, that is where the solution ultimately is directed towards. Bespoke measures are very important, as is making sure at a catchment level that we are dealing with the problem, looking at the science and making sure everybody is well equipped with the right information, perhaps the funding for capital works if they need it, and supports in that way.