Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 October 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Nitrates Directive, Water Quality and Pollution: Discussion

Photo of Martin BrowneMartin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for attending the meeting. They stated that the nitrates action programme is important for improving water quality and meeting the water framework objectives. The fourth NAP, however, has not protected the water from nutrient pollution from agriculture.

The EPA supports the fifth NAP, which it believes will help to tackle the failure of the fourth one. It says the measure is designed to target specific soils as the best way to go. I have a few questions about that.

Do the witnesses think that the current system, whereby only farmers who require a nitrates derogation stocking rate of over 170 kg of nutrient per hectare or above are required to fence off watercourses at a minimum distance of 1.5 m, should be extended? Also, is there not a case to be made for farmers with a stocking rate at or below 100 kg of nitrate per hectare not to have to fence off watercourses? I am asking this because the committee met with Mr. Joe Condon of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association, INHFA, recently, who warned that if an extension of this requirement happens, many farming hills and commonages would be forced out of cattle. With the budget fresh in our minds, it should be noted we are here today discussing measures to ensure, quite correctly, an improvement in our watercourses, and these measures will involve increasing environmental obligations on farmers, who, I must note, have been given hardly any new support. They have been disregarded. In the meantime, we consistently see farmers being targeted for blame for these problems. They are effectively being told to shoulder the burden of the changes needed.

We have to note that many farmers are getting the blame for the sins of just a few. What appears to be missing regularly from the argument is how the environment and economic sustainability can be married and work together, because the way this issue is being addressed is that one side is being pitted against the other, with the consensus being family farms will have to make changes and take the pain. We discussed the issue recently in the committee with representatives of the INHFA and they spoke of how a broad-brush approach to regulation does not take into account the different impacts of different types of farms. Can I hear the witnesses' thoughts on how they think the argument is being framed at present and what can be done?

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