Water shortage - We cannot overestimate this problem

THE difficulties involved in convincing any person wading through the Irish summer of 2007 that water is a scarce resource are obvious.

Our traditional and often unthinking expectation of a free and unlimited supply of clean drinking water is not allied to any great sense of communal responsibility in the management or protection of one of the great natural resources of our country. It is one that underpins all of our economic activity, especially the pharmaceutical, food and farming sectors.

To put it in context, the end of oil would be a mere catastrophe, the end of water would be the beginning of the end of life.