New Cabinet Committee Must Ensure All Sectors Play Their Part on Water Quality

IFA Environment Chair John Murphy said he was encouraged by the strong commitment in the Programme for Government to retain Ireland’s derogation.
“The commitment to establish a Cabinet Committee on Water Quality chaired by the Taoiseach will be an extremely important forum to co-ordinate water quality improvements across all sectors and ensure a whole-of-Government approach, which is essential if Ireland is to achieve its targets,” John Murphy said.
“’The across all sectors’ approach’ is really important to farmers who are concerned that the scale of ambition by the State to address non-compliance in wastewater treatment plants does not match the scale of ambition and effort in the agriculture sector to address agricultural pressures on water quality.”
“Farmers are concerned that the slow progress by the State to rectify non-compliance in wastewater treatment plants will have serious repercussions for the agriculture sector when it comes to retaining the derogation and a workable Nitrates Action Programme,” he said.
He said that there have been some encouraging signs from the EPA early insight report, which was published in December. It showed that in a representative sample of waterbodies, the nitrogen concentrations nationally reduced in the first half of 2024 relative to other years, and that they are at their lowest since 2016.
“This is a very positive sign, and hopefully shows that the measures, both regulatory and voluntary, adopted by farmers are starting to deliver improvement in water quality,” he added.
John Murphy said it’s vital that all farmers use the tools and advice available to adopt measures to improve water quality.
“The newly launched 60% grant aid for Nutrient Storage investments under TAMS 3 is another very important component of the plan to support farmers to invest and create additional storage capacity to optimise nutrient management,” he said.
“The next piece of the jigsaw is the immediate introduction of an exempted development threshold for stand-alone nutrient storage units, now that the Planning and Development Act has been passed,” John Murphy concluded.