Home heating habits and reliance on cars main culprits for air quality

Our home heating habits and over-reliance on petrol and diesel cars are the two key areas compromising the quality of the air we breathe — nowhere more so than Longford and Ennis, Co Clare.

While Ireland met all the EU legal standards for air quality in 2016, it repeatedly breached the more stringent limits set by the WHO.

Against a backdrop of an estimated 1,510 premature deaths in Ireland in 2014 directly attributable to air quality, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to more than double — from 30 to 68 — the number of air-quality monitoring stations in its network over the next five years, with each providing automated real-time data.