Joe Conway (Independent)

Although I am not a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy, I paid great attention to the massive fish kill in the River Blackwater on the Waterford-Cork border during the summer. It was an outrage. That is the only way to describe it. The best estimates are that around 30,000 fish died as a result. It was a very strange pattern of attrition among the fish. While that number of fish died, several other species of fish survived and remain perfectly healthy. It was a really unusual type of pollutant that got to them. The sad story is the officials told the committee yesterday that it is very unlikely that detection or resolution will be possible because the kill was not discovered until around 72 hours after the pollutant entered the river. It is hard to get your head around the fact that these are our own people damaging our own environment and not fessing up to it. The legislation bound up with fisheries is the Fisheries (Consolidation) Act 1959 and the Inland Fisheries Act 2010. Among other things, these set out the type of fines that can be imposed on breaches of the legislation. The fines are really quite substantial. The 2010 Act states that a person or concern can be fined up to €100,000 for breaches that impact on sensitive environments. It is mind-blowing to think that sort of thing can carry on. If we do not give teeth to the legislation or put in place the mechanisms to detect, then we are at nothing. As the fines are so huge, I wonder would the Government consider amending the 2010 Act to facilitate the offer of a bounty or reward. Somebody in the area around the River Blackwater knows what happened but they are not telling. I know it does not sound nice, but a bounty should be offered to induce people to come forward and stand up for our environment.