Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

I am pleased to have this opportunity to discuss the nitrates directive in this House and I hope to throw some light as opposed to some of the heat that has been thrown on it. I agree with Senator O'Meara on two issues. One is that this directive is about protecting water resources. The presence of nitrates in our water resources is nasty. People in rural Ireland are drinking those waters and we have to ensure there is an end to the presence of nitrates in these resources. Phosphates are nasty or as, the Senator said, they have a nasty effect, eutrophication being one of those effects, and there must also be an end to the presence of phosphates in our water resources.

If we care about our environment I could not put the position any better than the Senator's colleague, Deputy Howlin, did when in 1996 he said that our water resources, our rivers, our lakes and our groundwaters are national assets. He said it is essential that we protect these valuable assets and that economic progress does not bring about deterioration in the quality of our waters. Deputy Howlin was right in pointing out that is what we must do. It is what the nitrates directive requests us to do.

It is a disgraceful fact that 15 years after the directive was signed into law and 15 years after we agreed to do that, we still have not met our responsibilities. It is also a fact, which is unpalatable but must be recorded, that every other member state of the European Union has met its requirements in this regard because we all care about our environment. I believe that farmers care about it and that much of the blame laid on them is unfair because they are not the only source of pollution.

This Fine Gael motion condemns me for "signing into law regulations which go beyond best farming practice". Has that party forgotten that it was the then Minister for Agriculture, Mr. Yates, who in 1996 introduced the code of good agricultural practice, this document that I have in my hand? It had the full support of the farmers organisations at the time and was written in conjunction with the then Department of the Environment. It was signed jointly by both Ministers and subscribed to by Teagasc. This code is the baseline document. All the rhetoric and the huff and puff about the directive must bear relationship to it. Under the nitrates directive, this code of voluntary practice was to be prescribed into Irish law but it has not been.

Does Fine Gael not realise that in many respects the 1996 code went even further than the current regulations? Following our discussions with farming organisations we successfully negotiated in detail on specific points made by those organisations. Does Fine Gael not realise that the nitrogen limits prescribed by me in the regulations are less onerous than those in the 1996 document? I will give specific comparisons because I hope that one or two Senators might actually read the document. I draw Members' attention to page 51 and ask them to examine table 12. In the 1996 Fine Gael-Labour Party document, the stocking rates on less than 1.5 livestock per unit provides that nitrogen is supplied at zero. That is in the document to which the Members' opposite subscribe.