Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

No, I would happily answer on the issue of water. We should be paying farmers in respect of four things and we should start with water management. Earlier today, we published a river management study that shows we are going wrong. We will not acknowledge our flooding problem simply by draining every river or by concentrating on drainage in general. Really clever management of the land will be required in order that water will be stored rather than allowed to run off straight into streams. We should be paying farmers for that. We should also pay for them to restore the pristine water quality that the river study published earlier today indicates is what we are losing. We need to manage and farm really cleverly so that we do not pollute our land and our water. We should not make the same mistake as New Zealand, where a mad expansion in dairy and beef farming led to water quality being destroyed. New Zealand is now reversing its engines dramatically. We should learn from its mistake.

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