Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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I thank the Chair and our guests. The witnesses spoke a great deal about farmers and the situation they had to cope with recently in light of the reduction from 250 kg N/ha to 220 kg N/ha. I know there were quite a lot of visits to farms in Timoleague and that whole area in west Cork where water quality was found to be as good as you could probably get but it still made no difference to them. They are still in the same tunnel, on the same bus with the reduction from 250 kg N/Ha to 220 kg as if they were serial offenders. I have to ask a number of questions. No matter how well some farmers are making improvements, will it make any difference? Will they still be in the same situation that they will be dropped to 170 kg N/ha perhaps in the next couple of years because the political will is not strong enough in Europe to fight for the farmer?

I have to be honest and not wishing to be offensive to any individual here, are some of the organisations the right bodies to be looking over all of this? There is a situation in which I do not know how many towns and villages have raw sewage going into the tide in their local communities and no one is worried about that, looking into that or improving that. Surely that adds to the crisis the farmers are facing at present. The environmental watchdog said recently that 10,000 tonnes of raw sewage are pumped out into Irish waters every minute. That is coming from towns and villages; it has nothing to do with farmers as such.

I attended a meeting not so long ago in Shannonvale in Clonakilty where the issue has been reported on numerous occasions to Uisce Éireann that the stinking substance leeches into the Ardgroom River up to the intake pipe for the Clonakilty drinking water supply scheme. This has been going on for 26 years. That is an astonishing amount of time. I know of a man who built some houses down there. He is willing to sit down with Uisce Éireann and put this right; he is willing to invest in it. I have been trying for six months to get somebody in Uisce Éireann to put up their hand and say they will talk - it might not happen overnight but they will talk to him. If Uisce Éireann continues to step back and allow this to go on in a community in Clonakilty - Shannonvale is a huge area - without speaking to anybody, how can it be the body overlooking issues that farmers might be doing on a far smaller scale? I genuinely would like someone to be accountable in Uisce Éireann, put up their hand and say they can be contacted and we can try to put this problem right. It is only one of many in west Cork. I could name the other towns and villages - they are dotted around the country, so I will not name them individually - but they have raw sewage going into the water. Is Uisce Éireann the body to oversee farmers putting things right when its own house is in a shocking condition?