Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State of taking the matter. I know he is not the line Minister for the Department but I want to draw his attention to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, catchments report issued this week on the assessment of catchments and the reductions in nitrogen concentrations to achieve water quality objectives. The short synopsis of the document is that we have a problem with nitrogen. We have a problem in particular in the south and the east of the country and our indicators are moving in the wrong direction.

I will quote the key highlights in the report:

Elevated nitrogen concentrations in waters is one of the factors that leads to poor water quality outcomes in all waters. Estuaries and coastal waters, and groundwater drinking water supplies are particularly at risk.

There are a number of key catchments of concern with elevated nitrogen concentrations along the south, southeast and east coasts including the Maigue/Deel, Bandon, Lee, Blackwater, Suir, Nore, Barrow, Slaney, Tolka/Liffey and the Boyne river catchments.

Nitrogen concentrations in waters have been increasing since 2013 - between 2013 and 2019, all but one of the catchments of concern showed increasing trends in the amount, or load, of nitrogen discharging to the sea via our rivers.

The nitrogen load discharging to sea needs to be reduced in the catchments of concern to support healthy aquatic ecosystems. The scale of reduction needed ranged from zero in some years, to just over 8,000 tonnes of nitrogen in the Barrow catchment in 2018.

The data show that in the predominantly rural catchments, more than 85% of the sources of nitrogen in the catchment are from agriculture, from chemical and organic fertilisers.

In the case of the Barrow, the Suir and the Nore rivers, the three sisters as they are referred to, which drain upwards of 9,000 sq. km in the south east in their combined catchment, the figure is above 90%. In contrast, the majority of the nitrogen "in [the] Liffey/Tolka catchment, which incorporates Dublin City, is from urban waste water".

The problem is particularly pronounced in the south east, my area. Taking the most up-to-date figures from the report from 2019 and combining the figures from the Nore, the Suir and the Barrow, the report estimates that just over 20,000 tonnes of nitrogen were discharged. That are 20,000 tonnes flowing out between Hook Head and Dunmore East into what is supposedly a special area of conservation. It is flowing past Woodstown where shellfish fisheries are reporting significant mortalities in their oyster harvest. People living in the estuary all their lives report a steep decline in mussels and other shellfish. However, I would caveat that by pointing out that a number of factors may be at play in this.

I am always conscious of the dangers of conflating causation and correlation. The Farming Independentsupplement of the Irish Independenttrumpeted in April 2020 that since the abolition of milk quotas in 2015, there has been a 38% increase in cow numbers and 92% of that increase accrued in Munster and Leinster. When combined with the figures in this report, it leads to an almost inescapable conclusion that the intensification of agriculture in the past decade, in particular in the dairy sector, has placed greater pressure on rivers and watercourses.

I wish to stress a point to the Minister of State in the strongest terms. I wish to dispel a lazy anti-farmer narrative often pushed about the Green Party. I do not for one second blame the individual farmer in this. I have family members who farm. I am from a rural parish myself and I understand farmers have a business to run and a living to make. I do not know any farmer who would not like to reduce his input costs and who would not like to get more bang for his buck in terms of the fertiliser he uses on his land. Are we doing enough as a Government to support farmers in allowing them to make a living while taking pressure off river catchments, the effect of which we are seeing in this report?

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