EPA says councils need to step up efforts combating pollution 

Councils must step up their enforcement efforts in combating pollution in lakes and rivers, according to the environmental watchdog.

Councils across the country must step up their enforcement efforts in combating pollution in lakes and rivers, according to the environmental watchdog.

A scarcity of resources should not be used to explain the lack of action taken against polluters in local areas, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials told TDs and senators.

The EPA’s most recent assessments show only 54% of Ireland’s rivers, lakes, estuaries, and coastal waters are in satisfactory condition.

Only 36% of estuaries are in satisfactory ecological condition.

Although there is no one single overriding factor, agriculture is the largest offender, with dredging, draining, and channelling of waterways joining forestry and urban wastewater as other major causes, the committee heard.

EPA director at the Office of Evidence and Assessment, Dr Eimear Cotter, said local authorities need to “up their performance”.

Local authorities are responsible for a significant amount of environmental legislation, she said.

“With respect to water quality, we have said in our local assessment that local authorities need to more effectively deploy their resources ... that includes implementing good agricultural practice regulations which sit under the Nitrates Directive, increasing the number of farm inspections, following through on those inspections, and taking enforcement actions where needed,” she said.

When it was suggested that local authorities may not have enough resources, Dr Cotter said they had to do better with what they have.

“I think there isn’t an organisation in the world that can’t do with more resources, but the priority needs to be given to environmental protection, implementation, and enforcement of existing legislation,” she said.

“For us, it is about deploying their existing resources. I think there isn’t an organisation in the world that can’t do with more resources but for us, the priority needs to be given to environmental protection, implementation, and enforcement of existing legislation — that's deploying what they have already more effectively,” she said.

The EPA wants to see an increase in farm inspections and enforcement from local authorities to reduce the impact of agricultural activities on water quality, she said.

Programme manager at the EPA’s Office of Evidence and Assessment, Mary Gurrie, told the committee that the EPA can take cases at district court level, usually around 15 to 20 cases per year against the likes of industrial waste polluters and wastewater treatment plants.

Local authorities can also take prosecutions, but the number of cases taken is quite low, she said.

“You don’t always have to go to court to get an issue resolved, the aim is always to get an issue stopped if it is ongoing...but there does need to be sanctions for significant breaches of legislation. We would apply that ourselves and would hope that local authorities would,” she said.

The follow-up from identifying issues all the way up to prosecution does need to be improved, she said.