Naoise Ó Muirí (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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It is difficult to summarise where we are at, to be honest. From what I see, it is as follows. It looks like the agencies were working away on the issues, approaches, protocols and processes, but they did not pull it all together. Nobody joined it all up. The impression was left with the people on the ground and the communities that they were overwhelmed because nobody was really communicating and telling people what was happening. It seems to be the nature of the incident that it is all over unless it is caught. One of the witnesses said it was about 72 hours before the first fish was identified as dead. As Deputy Murphy and others have said, it seems that unless the agencies respond very quickly with all of the measures like sampling of fish and water sampling, they may well miss it.

That is what happened in this situation. First, it looks like there is a huge hole in the sampling, particularly water sampling, because nobody is taking responsibility for water sampling. I am happy to be corrected but that is what it looks like. There is clearly an ongoing issue that the EPA has to deal with. There are members here who are unhappy with the situation in north Cork. That is a matter for the EPA. It is clear there is a lot of local dissatisfaction with what is happening there.

Ultimately, we have no cause. Ultimately, we are all going away with no idea why this happened. The witnesses will be going home tonight, but this could happen tomorrow morning and we would have absolutely no idea. It could be a 50,000 fish kill or a 1,000 fish kill, but we would have no idea. That leaves the public representatives in a difficult position because they have no conclusions. I do not know if anybody wants to correct me on my summation. It sounds like another final report is coming. However, it will not contain anything different because there is no further analysis ongoing, other than some planning around restocking.

The question to the witnesses collectively is this. What is the ask of this committee? Is there anything else that we can do to help them deal with this issue, particularly regarding the deficiencies with sampling, so we do not have to be answering these questions again?