Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Compliance with the Nitrates Directive and Implications for Ireland: Discussion (Resumed)

Dr. Marie Archbold:

I will take those on behalf of the Department. I might flip the question on lag times. In 2018 there was the drought. The advice at the time was to put out chemical fertiliser to try to get growth and that is what the farmers did. Then, by the end of 2018, coming into autumn, we stated to see a huge spike in nitrogen in water quality. As the big flush came on, that continued. We had a wet winter which went into the wet spring of 2019. We saw the N concentrations go up dramatically. That is just to show that when something goes wrong, there is very little lag in the system. Therefore our system is very responsive to what happens.