Everyone is an expert and is expressing strong views. The formerly innocuous two words -Irish Water - are now commercial property and making people's blood boil.

What is the farmers role in the Irish Water saga? Well, here are thre quick questions:

Where does Irish Water come from? Ans: The sky!

Where does it fall to? Ans: The land!

Who manages the land? Farmers.

In fact if you farm in the East you are handling up to 10,000 tonnes of water per hectare per year. If you farm on the West coast then you are handling twice that amount.

Our farmed soils do a great job of filtering, purifying and adding lime to much of that water as it percolates down to the underground aquifers that feed the springs and wells. By maintaining the land in good heart, by maintaining our water courses and by taking care in managing soiled water, we play an essential role in the provision of Irish Water.

The water cycle has been going around forever. Evaporation forms cloud, clouds precipitate rain, rain via soil, feeds streams and aquifers. It seems crazy and perverse for a commercial entity to step into the natural water cycle and claim ownership of water and ask farmers to buy it.

We should start proclaiming our role in the Irish Water story. The issue is not whether farmers should pay Irish Water two bills or one bill. The issue should be how much will farmers be paid for their role in the collection and accumulation and supply of drinkable water to Irish Water

As the angry exchanges rumble on we have opportunities to be smart. Rain water is drinkable water and a thousand litres of it fall each year on every square metre of our farms, roofs and yards. We need to start holding onto to a bit of that to water our stock, wash our yards and supply our homes. There should never be a need for a farmer to pay someone else for water. Some call it water harvesting; let’s just call it common sense.