The promise of fine weather makes the heart rise in the most casual of urban gardeners. And when that prospect is linked with the freedom of an Easter Bank Holiday, the lure of the open road, of high hills and still and flowing waters, the anticipation becomes magical. For we have a wonderful rural heritage, a generous farming community and an abundance of wild and hidden places. And we must guard that resource against abuse and damage. After all, tourism generates more than £1.3 billion a year in foreign earnings, employs an estimated 93,000 people and attracts 4.2 million visitors from abroad. After agriculture, it is our largest industry. And the two sectors are deeply intertwined.
In that context, the public health scare over mad cow disease carries a political message for the Government which extends far beyond the beef sector. Consumer power was exercised in the most emphatic terms in recent weeks as beef consumption throughout the European Union fell by as much as 30 per cent. It showed the consumer to be the final arbiter of the success or failure of an enterprise. And what is true for the food industry is equally valid for tourism. Just as consumers can turn elsewhere for their beef, so tourists can visit other parts of the world if the product we offer fails of measure up. The agriculture and tourist sectors have a common, if still dimly recognised, interest in ensuring the highest quality of environmental protection.
The radical herd slaughtering policy introduced by the Fianna Fail government in response to the BSE scare in 1989 has helped to save farmers and the economy from a British style financial disaster. Similar comprehensive long term planning is now required in terms of environment protection and water quality. For the protection of water quality is an investment which will ensure long term economic, environment and social benefits.
Clean water, clean air and healthy livestock are all contributory factors to the enjoyment of visitors and to the overall well being of this country. For years we have marketed Ireland and Irish farm products as being synonymous with healthy living. In recent years that image has begun to dim as intensive farming practices, driven by EU funding and CAP provisions, affected the countryside. Water quality, in particular, has suffered. And the damage has been compounded by inadequate urban sewage facilities and growing industrialisation.
European countries are already spending billions of pounds in trying to reduce the damage done to their rivers and waterways. By contrast (and in parallel with the British BSE experience), we have suffered relatively little pollution so far. But reports from the River Shannon and its lakes, Allen, Rea and Derg; from the Rivers Lee and Blackwater and from the great lakes of the west, all plot a graph of gradual decline in water quality. In a few instances, river and lake waters are so polluted by sewage that it is not safe to swim there.
The Government has begun to take remedial action. Eight new sewerage schemes are being built by the Department of the Environment in the Lough Rea catchment area; others are being built in the west and upgrades are being provided in many districts. The Department of Agriculture is encouraging farmers to reduce phosphate run off levels through participation in the Rural Environment Protection Scheme and in the Control of Farm Pollution Scheme. And efforts are being made to reduce industrial pollution through the Department of Enterprise and Employment.
In their programme for government, the Coalition parties recognised that environment protection was "a vital source of comparative advantage for Irish industry" and promised "major institutional reform and policy and legislative changes." Some of that work has been put in train but, this weekend, as the countryside balances on the cusp of springtime, a new sense of urgency and political commitment is required to protect our fragile, vulnerable and beautiful countryside.