Growing up in Ireland in the early 1970s, you could easily have had proud notions about how clean and green our island was. We may have been beset by other troubles, but our waters were clear, our rivers and lakes were teeming with fish and some 4,000 holy wells were there to remind us how we always venerated such a clean water supply.

When you turned on the tap at home, you could imagine the water coming from a mountain spring, and feel sorry for those living in less hallowed lands. Even our new decimal coins celebrated nature, with the 50-pence piece carrying a woodcock and the 10-pence piece a leaping salmon.

There was some romantic thinking behind such pride. In truth, Ireland’s urban rivers were more often treated like open sewers and our drinking water was far from safe. As recently as 1961, the Census showed that nearly half of Irish homes had either no flushing indoor toilet (46 per cent) or no running tap (43 per cent), and with those realities came inevitable contamination and health problems.

What was a legitimate source of pride was the high quality of our rural environment, and this is where we have since seen the greatest loss. In the 1980s, 500 of our rivers had pristine status, which is now down to 20. Nearly half of our........

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