Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 5 July 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Ireland's Water Quality: Discussion
Mr. David Flynn:
In the EPA water quality reports that look at water bodies and what is causing the pressure on water status in them, the top one was agriculture, primarily cultural nutrients, then hydromorphology, which is the shape and flow of the rivers, then it was forestry and urban wastewater was fourth. One of the issues is that many of those other areas are either stable or improving so the number of water bodies is lessening, whereas that is not the case in agriculture at the moment. Those are the data the EPA has given us.