Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Bill briefing was produced by the Oireachtas. I certainly never said that all the recommendations from the pre-legislative scrutiny report were not implemented. I said only two of the 13 were. That was confirmed by the Bill briefing we got. That briefing provides much of the rationale and feedback from the Department. That should already be available to Members. I welcome that the Minister of State will share that, all the same. Some of the key recommendations in that report were not taken on board.

This should not be about compliance with EU law or EU directives. This should be about doing what is right for us as a country to ensure our long-term sustainable access to water. This is very important especially for farming communities. If this is not well regulated and well done, farming communities, who are on the front line in terms of water resources and care of the land, will suffer most from this.

We have been asking for the science or the evidence base for setting the thresholds. If we could get that, it would be very useful. I understand that a threshold of 2,000 cu. m means that a town the size of Nenagh would fall into this, but anywhere below that in terms of daily water intake would not fall into it. This means that enormous abstractions would not be required to have a licence. This is very hard to understand, especially given just how important this is and the knock-on impacts it can have for communities, businesses, farmers and everybody else.

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