Dr. Jenny Deakin:

When we are doing our assessments, what really matters is what is going on in the river. If there is a problem in the river, no matter the source, we will pick that up in the monitoring data. We work back from there to figure out where it is coming from. If it is coming from a wastewater treatment plant, we will see that. As the Deputy mentioned, upstream is different to downstream. We have the monitoring data and the experiences of the representatives of local authorities and the local authority waters programme, LAWPRO, who are doing stream walks to try to pin down the issues. What matters to us is water quality. We pick up those problems and them it is over to Irish Water to figure out how to fix them if they are caused by a plant.