3% decline in unpolluted waterways linked to farms

The Environmental Protection Agency has identified agriculture as being responsible for some of the recently revealed 3% decline in unpolluted waterways.

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Secretary General Aidan O’Driscoll has indicated this is one of the reasons it will look at leeway on slurry spreading deadlines only on a farm-by-farm basis.

“The situation on slurry spreading here is pretty tricky,” he told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine last week.