Results 1,601-1,620 of 7,985 for speaker:Michael Fitzmaurice
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: Right. Certain areas seemed to be high on phosphorous. What would the EPA put that down to?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: How does the EPA know how many cows are in an area?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. It gets the farmer's details
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: Okay. Right. That is interesting. So on phosphorous, Dr. Deakin says the sources are 50:50.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: At a national scale. Is there a huge problem? I would put it very differently. In areas where there are no sewage treatment plants and where raw sewage goes out into rivers, which is common in an awful lot of places in the west of Ireland, no one even comes near to take samples. Would the EPA agree with that?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: Hold on. If there is no septic tank or sewage treatment plant, how can the EPA or Uisce Éireann-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: No, no. There are towns that do not have a sewage treatment plant. What happens then?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: There is way more. You could get 26 in County Galway.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: Yes, but we call it a town if there is a shop and a pub or whatever.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: Is sewage generally the big problem? You can see the areas affected. You would nearly pick out the areas where there is no sewage treatment plant.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: Could the committee get those assessments?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: All of the data are available to the committee.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: I have one final question. If we are looking at 179 high-priority rivers rather than at 800 rivers, which is a third of the 2,400, how can we say anything with certainty? It is like looking at a herd of cattle and saying 16 of them are bad. How can the EPA say these things when it does not analyse all of the different places and when some are analysed only every three years? I know the...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: The witnesses spoke about peat. Regarding the Little Brosna and Shannon rivers, did the EPA bring cases against Bord na Móna?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: The witnesses spoke about peat running down rivers, etc. Did the EPA bring any cases against Bord na Móna?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: It was well known in the cases of the Little Brosna and Shannon rivers. If peat is dangerous in this way, would the EPA recommend that all the Bord na Móna peat be cleaned out of the Shannon and the Little Brosna rivers?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: No, I am not talking about that. Dr. Cotter was speaking about THMs going down and organic matter going down in water. The River Shannon has a large amount of it from Bord na Móna, as everyone will acknowledge. Did the EPA bring a case against it?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: The case where it was stopped was different.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: Would the EPA recommend that the likes of the Little Brosna river, where peat was milled, be cleaned out?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)
Michael Fitzmaurice: For the information of the witnesses I am involved in a group water scheme. Generally, the location of a good spring well is fairly close to a bog or in soft ground. That is just for the information of the witnesses with regard to rural Ireland. It is actually the geological survey that will state where the water is coming from. It could be from a hill back the way. It does not always...