Ms Lorraine Gaston:

To add to what our colleagues in the Department have said, we see elevated nitrates in some of our groundwater and drinking water supplies. The lag time for trying to reverse trends in groundwater can be quite long. In other countries, it can be five to ten years and we would expect that kind of time for groundwater specifically. We cannot comment on whether enough time has been given for the midterm review as we were not involved in developing that report.