Eileen Lynch (Fine Gael)
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I thank all the witnesses for being with us today. I find the situation quite incredible. I have been thinking about it for the last 40 minutes or so as it has been discussed and I cannot quite believe it. I echo the comments of my colleagues. We will be raising this directly with the Minister. There are so many things wrong with this. The consultants have spoken a lot about derogation and it is obviously relevant to Mr. O'Driscoll's part of the world in Drimoleague - derogation is important for Cork in general - in terms of the water enhancement projects that have been carried out in Drimoleague.

When we look at the nitrates action plan 6 and the new requirement of the habitats directive when it comes to retaining our derogation, is there not information there that the ACA, which is across the country, will be able to feed back into our proposal when we are looking at our derogation proposal? It seems to be incredibly short-sighted. We are not aware of the extent of the extension of time we are looking for with derogation in order to put a proposal together that fully includes the habitats directive, as has been requested by Commissioner Roswall. We know it will take an awfully long time to put that proposal together when we look at watercourses all across the country. Is there not a role for the ACA to also feed into that? There is a lack of ecologists, which is a whole separate issue. Is there a role for the ACA to feed in? Is it not incredibly short-sighted by the Department to treat the ACA in this way?