Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I agree with the Deputy this must be a priority to reverse the pollution of Lady's Island Lake. A specific action plan should be developed for the lake and so forth. That will have to involve a number of stakeholders. It will not just be agricultural stakeholders, but, obviously, they will be key. The Minister of State responsible for biodiversity should lead on this in conjunction with the Ministers for agriculture and climate. We are engaged in a range of projects across the country. This will have to be done on cross-departmental basis.

The climate and biodiversity dimensions have to be central to this in order to get improvements. There will have to be a whole-of-government approach because there may be a need for financial intervention in order to enable any plan to have impact on the ground. I know it is not the Deputy's intention to apportion blame, but he is clearly saying that farming is creating the nutrient run-off into the lake. Clearly, the solution is going to have to involve neighbouring farmers. I will engage with the Minister of State, Christopher O'Sullivan, the Minister, Martin Heydon, and the Minister, Darragh O'Brien, and ask them to come together to coming up with a plan to deal with this issue. We have seen plans on other issues - whether it was the Corncrake LIFE project or the white-tailed eagles - in respect of which we engaged with stakeholders and which were - I will not say floundering - in difficulty early on. Through engagement with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, we got good responses and this resulted in the success and progression of those projects. There are other projects farmers have co-operated with - the Burren being a very good example - where we have also got good outcomes.

It is possible to get a good outcome, but an action plan involving all stakeholders has to be developed with a view to getting the outcome the Deputy correctly identified. It is not satisfactory to have ecological devastation at such an important site for a range of reasons.

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