EPA - Ireland's Environment 2016 - An Assessment

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87 Chapter 5: Inland and Marine Waters
The recent controversy in Ireland over domestic water
charges serves to highlight the need for a mature and
rational public debate with regard to how we want
to manage our national water resources for future
generations, not just from the narrow perspective of
domestic drinking water and waste water treatment
provision, but taking into account all services that are
gained by all sectors. Some of the key questions to be
debated include:
n What services do we obtain from catchment and
marine ecosystems?
n Who benefits from these services?
n Who should pay the environmental costs taking into
account the polluter/user pays principle, affordability
and fairness across sectors? and, ultimately,
n How should these environmental costs be paid for?
Underpinning the new river basin water governance
arrangements for managing waters and the bottom-
up community initiatives is the integrated catchment
management approach, which complements the river
basin planning process. It approaches sustainable resource
management from a catchment perspective, rather than
taking a piecemeal approach that artificially separates
land management from water management. Details
are available on the new – Water from
Source to Sea” website26 which provides details on local
catchments, how to get involved and work on the WFD.
The promotion of community action at a local level
is critical to engaging and securing ownership of the
problems at play and generating tailored solutions that
work for all sectors. These types of initiatives are important
for raising awareness of the value of catchment services
to society. To be effective they require the support and
technical advice of the environmental authorities.
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ceanography 27:126–141.
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Coll, J. and Sweeney, J., 2013. Current and future
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