Shane Ross (Independent)

——providing their friends in the farming lobby are looked after. That is not acceptable politics in this House. It is cheap politics to pander to this lobby for a short period of time and hope that everybody else will forget because the water cannot be polluted if no one can get it. The Minister has taken the right decision at some political cost.

Apparently, we are falling behind the rest of Europe in terms of water quality, and have been doing so gradually for approximately 25 to 30 years. That is not acceptable. It was time to call a halt to this deterioration in water quality. It is the height of irresponsibility to put this issue forward as some type of victimisation of the farming community. It is not acceptable politics and I commend the Minister on what he did today.

Farmers do pollute the environment. Let us spell it out and hear Fine Gael state it. Farmers are not the only people who pollute the environment but they do so. The EPA has found that they do so.