Mr. David Flynn:

I am grateful for the invitation to speak with the committee today on the subject of Ireland’s fifth nitrates action programme. I am joined by my colleague, Dr. Marie Archbold, who is a water policy adviser with the Department and co-chair of the nitrates expert group. The Department has policy responsibility for the implementation of the nitrates directive and the water framework directive and associated water directives. We work closely with our colleagues in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on these nitrates issues and all water quality issues. Both Departments benefit from expert support provided by Teagasc and the Environmental Protection Agency through the nitrates expert group.

On water quality, simply put, nutrient levels are too high in many of our water bodies. The draft river basin management plan, based on data from the EPA, links agricultural pressures to 1,000 water bodies out of a total of 4,842 water bodies. That is an increase of 223 over the previous period. In contrast, the number of water bodies impacted by urban wastewater is 208, which has decreased by 83 since the previous cycle. This excess of nitrogen and phosphorus compounds accelerates the growth of algae, causing an undesirable change in the natural ecology and lowering oxygen levels in waterways. This reduces biodiversity as fewer species can tolerate this change. Algal blooms impact on wildlife, drinking water and swimming areas. Excess nitrogen can cause health issues in drinking water supplies.

As a result of these trends in water quality as shown in the water quality monitoring programme, Ireland is required to take additional measures and reinforce existing measures sufficient to reduce water pollution and to prevent further such pollution. Part of this response is the fifth nitrates action programme. The programme includes several strengthened and new requirements. These requirements have been developed following stakeholder dialogue and three separate periods of public consultation. The key measures include changes to chemical fertiliser allowances, livestock excretion rate bands and expanded closed periods. My colleagues from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine will provide further details on those individual measures. In addition, there will be an interim review of the entire programme after two years and a review of local authorities’ agricultural inspection programmes.

On the derogations, the directive sets a universal limit of 170 kg of nitrogen per hectare per annum. Where a member state can demonstrate that a higher limit will not lead to higher pollution, the Commission may adopt an implementing decision, a derogation, that allows higher maximum limits of nitrogen subject to adherence to additional conditions. A derogation does not exempt Ireland from any of the directive’s water quality objectives. Ireland recently successfully secured a derogation for the period from March 2022 until December 2025. The only three other areas in Europe that currently benefit from a derogation are Denmark, until the middle of 2024; Northern Ireland, until the end of 2022; and the Flanders region of Belgium, until December 2022. The Netherlands is currently in the process of renewing its derogation and, going by recent media reports, this will be a three-year phase-out of its derogation, although that has yet to be decided.

Ireland’s current derogation comes with conditions that include an interim review that must include a water quality assessment that compares 2021 and 2022 data. This is to be conducted by June 2023. If the assessment shows that we have eutrophic water bodies, risk of eutrophic water bodies or water bodies with increasing trends or exceeding an average of 50 mg of nitrate per litre over three years, then farms in the catchment areas feeding these monitoring points will face a cut in the derogation limit from the current 250 kg to 220 kg of nitrogen per hectare.

In conclusion, to protect water there needs to be a broad acceptance of and adherence to good agricultural practice requirements. Ireland is simply not going to maintain the current derogation facility in its current format if recent water quality trends are not addressed and shown to have been addressed by a change in water quality data.