DAFM still seeking ‘flexibility’ on nitrates interim review

Minister for Agriculture noted the "absolute imperative of all of us working together to get water quality going in the right direction". Picture: Andy Gibson.

The Department of Agriculture has gone to the European Commission “about the benefits of a science-based targeted approach that could deliver more for water quality” than a cut to the nitrates derogation, but the commission is “set on pulling down that maximum stocking rate”, according to a senior inspector in the Department of Agriculture.

While negotiations are continuing, according to Ted Massey, the EPA’s nitrates and water quality report has gone to the commission.

The report, published in recent days, is part of the interim review process of the Nitrates Action Programme.

The review was required by the European Commission as part of granting Ireland’s nitrates derogation.

The report outlines the regions that could be required to reduce their organic nitrogen stocking rate to 220kg per hectare from 250kg in 2024 under the derogation, as a result of the effect of agriculture on water quality in these areas.

This would likely see a reduction in herd numbers.

Flexibility

Mr Massey said the department has been seeking “flexibility” around the interim review, and “to try and bring this back to a science-based approach that will deliver for water quality”.

“We’re fully accepting we have to do more but it’s to identify the best way to achieve that without those perverse consequences in terms of demand for land but also to protect farm income,” Mr Massey said.

“There’s a smarter way to do this — should we not be doing it that way?”

Speaking at the Teagasc Moorepark Open Day this week, Mr Massey said the EPA’s report “throws up some very stark anomalies”.

“In terms of the report, the EPA in fairness to them have followed the requirements that were set out by the European Commission,” he said.

“They have followed the wording that was set in the implementing decision granting us our nitrates derogation.”

'Anomalies'

There are “anomalies”, he said, “because that map is based on the Nitrates Directive data monitoring set and that’s what the commission said it was to be based on”.

“We know from the EPA’s work with a more comprehensive dataset — the Water Framework Directive water monitoring data — that if we were to apply that same test to that broader dataset, it would bring in more land” that would require further measures to protect water quality.

As the interim review process continues, a Strategic Environmental Assessment will be conducted, and this “will likely raise the fact that the EPA’s work is based on a smaller dataset, it doesn’t consider the best available information”.

Mr Massey said that when the commission first proposed the conditionality back in February 2022, “we made it very clear we needed more time”.

“When the commission proposed this, they were not taking into account the impact of the likes of banding only applicable from this year — that has no impact on water quality last year,” he said.

“The measures that were introduced last year will only probably start to show an impact from this year on.

“... But the commission [response is to] say to us ‘we don’t have time’ and that’s where the real challenge is.”

Not going to meet target

Under the Water Framework Directive, there is a 2027 target “that all our water bodies are meant to be in at least good ecological status, and we are not going to meet that target”, Mr Massey said.

“No other country in the EU is probably going to meet that target, but the reality is, at that stage, we will be one of probably only two member states seeking or in receipt of a derogation,” he added.

Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue said at the open day that his officials are “very determined to maintain the derogation, we fought hard to make sure we secured it, but in order to secure it we had to agree to a mid-term review”.

He noted the “absolute imperative of all of us working together to get water quality going in the right direction”, and to “make sure all the measures we’re adopting count, and farmers really are stepping up to the mark on that”.

“It’s really important we do that because we have a new negotiation as well post the mid-term review for 2025,” he said.

He said he is fully "behind the farming community in securing that derogation".

He added that he established the Agriculture Water Quality Working Group to “address the complacency that I saw” in industry, “that somehow this derogation was a given, that we would be able to keep getting it”.

“We cannot be complacent like that. We see the challenge that the potential of dropping to 220kg is having on our sector,” he said.

“We have a big task on our hands to work together to make sure we get it renewed.”

'No decision' on reduction scheme

Mr McConalogue added that the Government “has made no decision” on the introduction of a voluntary dairy reduction scheme.

“It is something that I have now gone back to the dairy vision group looking for further proposals, further ideas in relation to what it would look like were we to do it,” said the minister.

“I haven’t come to any conclusion on that, I am very much looking for further information from the stakeholders on the dairy vision group on what that might look like and how it could contribute,” he said.

IFA dairy chairman Stephen Arthur said that there cannot be a reduction scheme “if it’s going to impair the people staying behind”.

He said it would “restrict young people coming into the business and the people staying in are going to get caught, so we can’t agree to anything that’s going to hit the people staying behind”.