Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)

I thank the Minister of State very much. I visited the site with Deputy Quaide and spoke to many of the anglers there. It was a devastating fish kill. It was probably way more than 40,000 fish, such as trout, that were killed. The problem is that once those fish are gone, they are gone. Their reproduction capacity is gone. It will take more than ten years to get the river back to a standard and that will not naturally happen either. There has to be serious management and monitoring of the river because there are invasive species in it and they may now become the dominant species there. It is important issue that needs to be taken care. I welcome the interagency group. It is important that protocol is put in place immediately or as soon as possible. What was clear from investigating this was that all the different agencies were working in their own silos. There was little overlap between them. Unfortunately, the delays that happened allowed for that contaminant to wash through the system before any investigations could happen.

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