It was just like Questions & Answers on RTE . Host John Bowman was even present to ignite intense discussion on "Ireland's environment - the way forward". Cameras were absent but those at the 1997 Irish Water Waste and Environment Exhibition in Dublin last June were as engaged as in the real thing. The issue of water quality dominated.
The deputy president of the IFA, Ireland's largest farmer organisation, Michael Slattery, gave as good as he got when farmers were berated. He issued a statement afterwards defending the farmers' record.
Farmers were spending close to £1 billion on pollution control, he said. Nothing wrong there. He proceeded to paint the Irish environmental canvas by quoting from an Environmental Protection Agency report.
Our environment compared "favourably with other states in the EU, with more than 71 per cent of Irish inland waters unpolluted". Irish landscape quality was "particularly high". There had been an overall decline in fish kills compared to the 1980s, reflecting a vigorous response by farmers.
That same month a document was issued by Fianna Fail; a frank evaluation of the Irish environment. Our lakes were so polluted and so little was being done that concerned groups had had to seek the European Commission's help, the party noted. It then cited:
Ireland's standing, 18th out of 19 countries, as per percentage of the population (11 per cent) served by water treatment plants;
Salmon numbers in the Erne catchment down from 25,000 in 1967 to 2,000 today;
29 per cent of river channels surveyed had some form of pollution, 39 per cent of lakes were "polluted";
13 per cent of water samples did not comply with standards for coliform bacteria - indicating the presence of faecal matter; Fish kills after some years of decline were increasing again;
Up to 30 per cent of farmland with excessive amounts of nitrates/phosphates - a primary source of pollution.
Five areas with excessive pesticide residues in water.
The IFA statement reassures. The FF document disturbs, particularly after warnings over the past decade of the decline of Irish waters. Doubt over where reality lies is eliminated by talking to any angler regularly fishing our waters or any of a growing number of environmental groups campaigning for good water.
Summer 1997, notwithstanding weather factors, puts it beyond doubt. Enrichment by phosphates/nitrates (eutrophication that facilitates algae blooms) is all too evident. It's as if by stealth, for it's a slow kill. Pollution incidents, as opposed to systemic enrichment, have left more than 300,000 trout and salmon dead.
There are particularly upsetting trends. The Arctic char disappeared from Lough Conn in Mayo because of pollution. The Munster Regional Trout Angling Council fears this particularly susceptible species will suffer the same fate in Lough Leane, one of Killarney's lakes.
What angers is the incomplete picture. Damage to Lough Leane has not been properly assessed. This view is echoed in relation to many other waters. John P. Burke, chairman of the 18,000-strong Trout Anglers' Federation of Ireland, says they have "no faith whatsoever in the EPA" because Killarney lakes up to 1996 were said to be pristine.
"Either the EPA was not telling the truth or there was inadequate monitoring. Deterioration doesn't happen overnight. It's a six- to eight-year process."
Then threat to species has prompted some of the world's great environmental crusades. In Ireland, however, inaction or inappropriate responses are facilitating decline, albeit slowly, of our waters. It means this life creating/enhancing system is itself exposed to the possibility of chronic breakdown. A biological life-support machine remains under threat while there is an incomplete picture of the extent of its deterioration, and blatant pollution is not contained.
Anglers and environmental groups speak of acute difficulty in obtaining information to show the condition of water courses, adequate or otherwise. This compounds anger and heightens mistrust of certain State bodies. They detect reluctance to confront farmers responsible for up to 80 per cent of phosphates/nitrates in water.
Another deplorable shortcoming, according to John Maye, chairman of Lough Mask Trout Anglers Association, is highlighted in a 1997 report on Lough Corrib. A "lack of real independence has evolved a culture of unofficial half truths and an unwillingness to allocate blame publicly. Reports of environmental damage from independent sources with impeccable credentials are often ignored or sidelined by State authorities.
"Eutrophication of Loughs Sheelin and Conn might have been avoided were officials willing to believe scientific reports that contradicted their own fixed assumptions."
Fixed assumptions mean water vulnerability has been allowed to increase. Frequent contamination also means compromise on taste as increased chlorination is inevitable. For many, particularly in small rural group schemes, heavy chlorination is the only means to an even partially usable supply, if only to ensure washed clothes do not stink of slurry.
Most groundwater supplies in rural areas with a limestone soil and intensive farming, including silage making and slurry spreading, are contaminated by E coli bacteria. These help to make up the significant numbers of public supplies found by the EPA in 1996 to be unfit for human consumption.
Is it any wonder that question marks over quality have facilitated the advent of a £35 million bottled water industry almost overnight?
Most Irish tap-water is safe. But the future will be demanding, for a new EU framework policy requires water not only to be safe but able to maintain many life forms. Equally, if the amount of quality water is allowed to diminish, and hugely increasing water demand and global climatic change are taken into account, conservation becomes a crucial philosophy to be embraced even in Ireland, a water-rich nation.
A water biologist familiar with Ireland is Dr David Santillo of the University of Exeter. He can explain why Europe's "last outpost of what should be pristine water" has followed others down the deterioration road, manifest in the diminished ability of waters to maintain salmon and trout and their increased sensitivity to pollution.
"Where people have perhaps made mistakes is in (using) insensitive ways of assessing the quality of lakes. Then you only notice damage when it's too late."
When asked in 1995 by Greenpeace to examine some of the West of Ireland's great fishing lakes, he found the beginnings of trouble; "significant inputs of nutrients and every indication that should this continue damage was going to get worse".
Water quality has worsened in many systems. Though on his most recent Irish visit, he found encouraging moves to tackle the problem through catchment management plans (advocated by the Departments of the Environment and Marine and Natural Resources) and better management of phosphate-rich slurry.
Heartened by the efforts of the EPA, fishery boards and An Taisce, Dr Santillo nonetheless fears the underlying problems will persist if the developed world keeps faith in the Victorian - and mircobiologically nonsensical - practice of dumping sewage into water it wishes to drink.
To suggest to anyone in remote areas of Africa that they put sewage in their water courses is, he says, greeted with disbelief. "They find it hard to believe a vital resource would be treated in such a way."
Revolutionary strategies are not required. Loadings into water catchments need to be evaluated and controlled, phosphate levels in soils need to be more extensively monitored and fertiliser/slurry levels carefully targeted.
Consumers must undergo fundamental change in the way they view water. There's "a disconnection in peoples' minds between water in rivers/lakes and the water they use; in toilets, in industry". Once they realise their impact, says Dr Santillo, they want to protect the resource.
Crucially, a mechanism is required to ensure that phosphate applied to land is only what's needed for farming, with no runoff into waters. This, says Patrick Buck, assistant manager of the South Western Regional Fisheries Board, could be done through education, soil testing and a fertiliser tax. "There is no rocket science involved. Few environmental problems are as easy to solve. We haven't yet arrived at the decimation stage. Now is the time to do it."