Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to make statements on water policy. Despite many of the complaints I hear about Irish Water and individual towns and locations, we need to look at this in a broader perspective. We would all have been taught about the hydrological cycle in school. We know where water comes from. We know that water is a finite and limited resource which is under severe pressure in this country. These statements are fitting in a week when COP27 is trying to address the global nature of climate change and its impact on countries across the planet. For example, changing weather patterns will impact on the hydrological cycle, on the amount of water that falls in this country and on how we store it. An impact will be felt nationally and globally.

We seem to take water for granted in this country. We think we have an abundance of it. I think that is because we get considerable rainfall. However, water is expensive to store, treat and distribute. It is also expensive to maintain our very intricate network of drinking water pipes to our homes and the wastewater discharge pipes that come from our houses and end up in rivers, lakes and our coastal waters, thereby causing pollution.

The Sustainable Water Network, SWAN, An Taisce, the Water Advisory Body and Teagasc appeared before the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage when we were looking at issues of water quality and impacts in Ireland. I will read SWAN's synopsis of the last river basin management plan. It said that "an interim assessment of the previous river basin management plan reveals that only two out of ten expected outcomes ... have been achieved"; that "nitrate and phosphate pollution has increased significantly since 2013" and that "we have lost 96% of our most pristine rivers in the past 30 years".

When we hear complaints about the quality of water that comes out of our taps, we have to look at the source of that water. It is coming from our rivers, lakes and groundwater. If we continually carry out practices that pollute those water sources, we will have those problems at the end of the pipe where it comes into our houses. Deputies are quite right to raise those problems. Our water supply is on a knife-edge. The pressures on our river water quality and our water supply are up there with the challenges we face in biodiversity and climate. When we see disruptions in water supply, boil water notices and the remedial action list for the trihalomethanes that are in our water from excessive organic loadings, we need to stand up, take account and look at the sources contributing to that water damage.

I ask the Minister of State to take on board a couple of my concerns with regard to water policy that we could bring into our overall water policy. I wish to see greater funding provided for the testing of nitrates in our water to assist our farmers. I do not believe any of our farmers wish to pollute water but the reality is that agriculture is contributing to water pollution. The draft river basin management plan states:

... the principal causes of the decline in Ireland’s water quality are the increasing loss into water of polluting phosphorus and nitrogen from farmland ... [and] inadequately treated waste water.

That is the responsibility of Irish Water. We have heavily modified many of our river courses which impacts on biodiversity and marine and aquatic ecology. We need to address hydromorphology to comply with the water framework directive and to have those free-flowing rivers as required under the nature restoration plan. How much time do I have left?

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