Clare, Mayo and Galway top IFA Aquaculture coastal league table
Cork, Louth and Kerry all attained scores close to Clare, which pipped 2012 leader Mayo as this year’s cleanest county. IFA’s Aquaculture section, which represents all Irish fish and shellfish farmers, said it received detailed responses from local authorities in Clare, Wexford, Cork and Galway. Acknowledgements were received from Mayo and Louth councils, but no new information or acknowledgment was received from Donegal, Sligo, Limerick, Kerry or Waterford. IFA members will raise this failure to engage with the seafood sector with local representatives.
IFA Aquaculture spokesman Richie Flynn said: “Our members depend on top quality waters to produce the best seafood for home and export consumption. Bays and inlets, particularly for sensitive shellfish growing areas, are monitored monthly for contaminants from urban and domestic waste to ensure the highest food safety standards.
“This is a legal requirement and is in addition to the European Directive on Shellfish Waters Quality which obliges local authorities to protect waters from pollution. Since IFA took the Government to the European Court of Justice for failing to recognise its responsibilities under this directive, important progress has been made in education, surveying, treatment and better awareness of the link between water quality and food safety. However, as our contacts with councils and the league tables now published show, there remains much to be done.”
Mr Flynn said a very strong system of classification of water bodies is in place, using data gathered by the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority and analysed by the Food Safety Authority, the Marine Institute, the HSE, BIM and IFA Aquaculture annually to set classification standards in 133 different bays. The biggest challenges facing the sector are discharges from old or redundant waste water treatment plants, inadequate treatment coupled with inappropriate developments in towns and villages around the coast during the boom years which have added to a very complex network of potential point source pollution risks that must be monitored.
Mr Flynn has also called upon local authorities and members of the public to inform IFA Aquaculture of any uncontrolled, badly planned or poorly monitored waste water treatment sites.
In a letter to coastal county managers in February, Mr Flynn said: “We would appreciate if you could inform IFA Aquaculture of the actions your authority is taking to improve the situation in your area, including sanitary surveys, identification of all septic tank outfalls which may impact on water quality, monitoring of storm water and sewage outfalls from towns around the coastline and plans in place to address falling water quality where relevant.”
