Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I find myself in agreement with Opposition speakers here today. We worked together on the relevant Oireachtas committee. As has been said by others, we heard from a number of witnesses who advised us and we put together a report with a number of recommendations. The most important piece of information the committee received was legal advice from the OPLA on a number of questions we raised. I am unsure as to whether we did or can share this legal advice with the Department but I think it is extremely important that the Department considers the questions raised in that legal advice. I will go through them in more detail.

The first thing I will discuss is the issue of thresholds. I think the thresholds are wrong. One of our Senators put down an amendment that would have ensured the threshold would have been reduced from 25 cu. m to 10 cu. m. That amendment was ruled out of order as it would place a cost on the State or the people. I cannot remember the difference between them. I understand why that requirement is there and why the Bills Office may rule, and I ask for the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's judgment on this as well, but I do not understand. Everything administrative places some level of cost on somebody. What was being proposed would have been of far greater benefit to the people and the State than what is being proposed in the Bill. I ask the Minister of State to consider that because if I put down the same amendment, it will get the same ruling here and it would be a waste of time. I ask the Minister of State to seriously consider introducing the 10 cu. m limit for registration.

I do not do this to place an onus or unnecessary regulations or rules on people who are abstracting less than 25 cu. m. I ask for it to assist us in managing our water quality, abstraction rates, flow rates, ground water and lakes and in order that we would have a comprehensive register. One of the reasons we are trying to do this is because we do not have such a register. Much of the registration is kept in local authorities and is not centrally located and that is what we would be able to do through this Bill. In order to be able to manage something, you need to have the numbers. You need to know what is going on. I would imagine that anybody who is abstracting water would want to protect that water source. In cases where we have low flow, low ground water or low lake levels, I think anybody abstracting from those sources would like to play his or her part in trying to manage and ensure we do not over-abstract. Having a 10 cu. m threshold and having registration is not about putting rules and anything more difficult on people who are abstracting; it is about making sure we can communicate that we know where those locations are and can manage our water resources. I do not think anybody abstracting that water would mind doing that.

Regarding the cost on the State or the people, when the EPA and Irish Water, which are the two bodies tasked with this, appeared before the committee, they said that registering is not an onerous process. It is quite an easy process to register so we are not talking about some difficult and hugely administrative burden involved in trying to register these 10 cu. m. I imagine that others will put in that same amendment and we would have good reason to do so because it is similar to what we see in other jurisdictions such as Scotland and Wales. They have a similar hydrological cycle and similar geology, so there is no reason we should go for 25 cu. m when they go for 10 cu. m. I hope the Minister of State can bring that forward on Committee Stage because then it would not be subject to being ruled out of order, which would probably be the case if I or others brought it forward.

In terms of the lawfulness of that threshold, as I remember the legal advice, the 25 cu. m was an arbitrary figure, may not stand up to scrutiny and may not be compliant with the water framework directive. The reason we are trying to do this is because it is incredibly important that we manage our water. Over the past two years, we have had many discussions on water, Irish Water, water quality and water supplies. We were held to account in Europe because we failed to have a proper abstraction management system or register in place. What I feel we may be doing here is trying to comply with that European ruling and putting in place a system so we can go back and say we are now compliant with that infringement order. I am not sure what the correct terminology for it is. However, what we will be putting in place will eventually be found to be non-compliant with the water framework directive so it will be an infringement similar to that but just on another basis. My concern is that we are just pushing something down the road. We are better than that. I think all of us in here want to protect our water quality and environment.

The advice from the OPLA is quite clear. Often when you read legal advice, it can be quite complex and difficult to understand. The advice we were given was really clear so I hope the Minister of State takes that into account, considers it and sees what can be done.

I note that we got quite some detail on water abstraction during pre-legislative scrutiny. We were told that 4% of rivers, 9% of lakes and 8% of ground water bodies are at risk due to abstractions. They appear to be small figures but our hydrological cycle is changing. We are going to have periods of drought, high rainfall and flooding and those figures may change. It would be wise for us to put in place a system that recognises that if we are not aware where all these abstraction points are, we cannot manage them properly. Water is one of those vital and finite resources where failure to manage it affects health, our country and every single person in this country, not just the people who abstract. It affects our economy and can have a massive detrimental impact on our country in general. I hope the Minister of State takes these points into consideration for the next Stages.

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