Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I share the Deputy's disappointment, and particularly for those local groups in the area who were impacted and the real loss of sporting opportunity as well as commerce to the region.

That is not something that should be stated glibly.

Obviously, the Government takes this major pollution event extremely seriously. As the House is aware, farmers have been asked to escalate their efforts around water quality protection, and therefore State agencies must do the exact same, if not a bit more. Moreover, there is a duty on the State bodies and actors in the public sector to take the lead in ensuring the risk of pollution incidents is minimised.

Investigations are continuing into the very serious incident raised, and there may be consequent legal proceedings. It is imperative that lessons be learned from this event so we will be in a stronger position to ensure the prevention of such events in the future. That there was a previous incident, in August 2022, does not mean the one under discussion is the same. There are different areas. Lessons may have been learned from one incident but, unfortunately, a different event may lead to secondary incident. Regardless, that is semantics because incidents of this nature are a significant source of concern owing to their devastating ecological impact, as well as their commercial and societal impact on the entire region.

The Minister has written to Uisce Éireann on the matter. He will be meeting its CEO shortly to be briefed on what systems Uisce Éireann will put in place to avoid a repeat of this kind of incident and, indeed, discover what happened, how it was resolved and what will happen to make sure it does not happen again. That is what we want to achieve.

I thank the Deputy for raising this and I will ensure the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and his officials stay in close contact with him as and when the investigation proceeds.

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