Uisce Éireann has recently been fined €3,500 for a pollution event that occurred in Cavan. This pollution event resulted in a 2 km stretch of riverbed being covered with sewage fungus and hundreds of brown trout dying. Unfortunately, this is not a one-off incident. If we look, Uisce Éireann is repeatedly fined for breaches of its licence and for causing pollution events. Unfortunately, the paltry €3,500 fine is laughable, considering the damage that is being done. This follows hot on the heels of a major and catastrophic fish kill in the Blackwater, County Cork. We need a complete overhaul of how the State deals with a pollution event. What we see is State agencies essentially treating our rivers like drains and not protecting valuable river systems. We need a rapid response team, a cross-agency team, to be set up immediately to quickly respond to pollution incidents and with the ability to collect whatever samples are required. When incidents are found, there has to be enforcement and fines commensurate with the damage caused.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. It is a fair point that she is making. State agencies should not be polluting waterways and our rivers. Certainly, Uisce Éireann should not be. There should be severe penalties. To be fair, on the other hand, Uisce Éireann develops a lot of wastewater treatment plants, which are very beneficial to water quality. It has to put up with a lot of objections and judicial reviews to stop wastewater treatment plants being developed and so on, so the other side of the coin has to be acknowledged. However, it should be very vigilant in terms of not creating situations like the one in Cavan that the Deputy has outlined. I do not have the full details of that. The Blackwater fish kill was appalling. The EPA has not been in a position to identify who was responsible, but it was catastrophic in its impact on water quality, fish life and so forth. It is a matter we will keep under review.