Results 1-20 of 102 for epa segment:8681127

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Michael Fitzmaurice: I saw the EPA going to court stating, with regard to peat bogs, that the whole bog was hydrologically connected. As Dr. Cotter is aware, when a case was brought in the past few weeks and the EPA was asked for the evidence and science of it, it had none to produce even though the EPA believes in science. An ordinary person had to spend large amounts of money to show hydrologically and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Paul Daly: As I said, the EPA is being judge, jury and executioner in that. If the EPA was commissioned by the Commission to do the report, should the EPA not have left the Commission - if they are the only people who are peer reviewing or having a look at this report other than the EPA - the option to have a viewpoint rather than telling it the outcome?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Paul Daly: No, we are talking to the EPA today. We will talk to Teagasc on other occasions. The EPA are the people sending the report to the Commission. It is the EPA we are questioning today. We will have Teagasc in, no doubt, and we will make comparisons. We are talking to the EPA today and I want an answer to my question. Do the witnesses have scientific proof that what they have said is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Tim Lombard: The EPA included additional information on the other map for clarity. It may be on page 21. Is the view of the EPA that the criteria set by the Commission was not appropriate? What is the view of our guests about how the EPA set those criteria?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Michael Fitzmaurice: ...priority rivers rather than at 800 rivers, which is a third of the 2,400, how can we say anything with certainty? It is like looking at a herd of cattle and saying 16 of them are bad. How can the EPA say these things when it does not analyse all of the different places and when some are analysed only every three years? I know the witnesses will say this complies with what the EU has...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Tim Lombard: The farming community has introduced changes in the past three or four years, involving more than 30 different measures. The EPA representatives acknowledged today that when they model catchments, derogation farmers are not part of the modelling. In other words, the EPA does not acknowledge the derogation farmers are there. We have a scenario now whereby when we have a catchment, we take...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Paul Daly: I said I had a couple of issues. There is the peer review issue and the fact the EPA put this report together, the EPA has sent it out and it is afait accompli. The Commission is not analysing the EPA's results. It is taking the report. It is analysing the EPA's report. I will use our friend, the farmer in Leitrim, who may be put out of business as a farmer based on the fact he is red and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Victor Boyhan: I know, but the EPA is not judge and jury on its own cause either. Has it been independently peer-reviewed externally outside of the EPA?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Ms Mary Gurrie: The EPA is the regulator for Irish Water. There is about 1,000. The EPA has the licence for Uisce Éireann.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Paul Daly: -----albeit that the level of nitrogen remains acceptable under the drinking water regulation, it is lobbed into the red map. In the EPA's conclusion, it is stated it is doing the report on behalf of the Department and the Commission, which will then sit down and thrash this out. I cannot see why, in the conclusion of one paragraph, the EPA just became judge and jury, stating that in the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Martin Browne: On a professional level with regard to the EPA, and without reference to the European Commission, which data, as inferred by the targeted measures map and the red map, are, from the point of view of the EPA, more useful in identifying the problems and in determining the actions which need to be taken here?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Tim Lombard: I do think there is an issue in that farmers feel they have been paying for every sin in the world. Would it be fair that, in due course, the EPA might provide us with the details of the 200 bodies of water that are under pressure from the point of view of water quality? The EPA might also provide a list of section 63s that have been issued by it to local authorities. Section 63s are...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Tim Lombard: Dr. Cotter rightly referred to a sole focus on derogation farms producing nitrogen. Unfortunately, the recommendations largely affect them solely. I appreciate that the EPA had to add a second map it was not asked for in order to bring more clarity to the situation. If the EPA were to model this map, would it do so differently?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

...gained considerable experience in how water quality can be affected by a wide range of activities and how these present a risk to the environment. I was engaged by the IFA to independently review EPA water quality reports, Teagasc research and the nitrates action programme. In Ireland, the role of agriculture has been constantly portrayed as the most significant cause of nitrates in our...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Tim Lombard: ...these targets. It is such a blunt instrument. It is very like the Leitrim scenario that has been discussed in the Dáil. It just proves how blunt it really is. I got the impression that the EPA is frustrated. That is why it produced the second map. The second map was not a part of the actual process; the EPA produced that off its own bat. Unfortunately, when Article 12 was...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Michael Ring: Dr. Cotter spoke about enforcement and she said that the EPA brought Irish Water to the courts. If the witnesses do not have the information now, they might send it on to me, but how many prosecutions have there been in the last two years or how many cases has the EPA brought to the courts? How many have involved farmers and how many have involved local authorities, fishery boards or...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Victor Boyhan: ...are here and I have no doubt others are tuned in. I have a few comments and questions before I elaborate. Balanced analysis of water quality data is required to formulate national policy. The EPA report will have a profound impact on agriculture. We need to take an holistic approach to agriculture. We talk about sustainability, profitability and viability in this industry. We have...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Martin Browne: I welcome the witnesses. It has been said of the water quality monitoring report the EPA has done that the agency concludes that the average nitrates concentration has increased since 2012-13. Claims have been made that this is not supported by any data. How has the EPA reached its conclusion if the data do not exist? Dr. Cotter spoke about trends and so on but data should be used here...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Tim Lombard: A list of the section 63s issued would be very appropriate. It would show the work the EPA is doing from the point of view of enforcement to oblige local authorities or Uisce Éireann to make sure that water quality is up to standard. A list per county or by local authority area would give an indication of the good work the EPA is doing and make sure that it is not just having a crack...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Water Quality Monitoring Report: Discussion (19 Jul 2023)

Tim Lombard: I have two more questions. I apologise, the Chair has given me great latitude. First, on the amount of testing which the EPA went through earlier, it is an average of 12 per water body per year. I was trying to make the point about what is happening in the Timoleague catchment where we are testing once every ten minutes. I worked out that for every one test the EPA was doing, we were...