Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 372: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if he will provide statistics to indicate the level of traffic-related pollution in central Dublin. [15888/04]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The reporting and making available of information on ambient concentrations of pollutants within the scope of the Air Quality Standards Regulations 2002, including pollutants sourced, inter alia, from traffic is the responsibility of the Environmental Protection Agency. The most recent annual report from the EPA is the Air Quality Annual Report 2002 published in 2003. The EPA also recently published its third state of the environment report entitled Ireland's Environment 2004 which contains a chapter dealing with air quality assessment across a range of pollutants including some statistics on traffic-related air pollution in Dublin city. Copies of both EPA reports are available in the Oireachtas Library. In addition, the EPA operates an air quality website, located at www.epa.ie/air/monitoring, with up-to-date information from several monitoring stations, including the Dublin City Council stations at Winetavern Street and Coleraine Street, which allows the public to gauge air quality by reference to current EU and national standards on a real-time basis.

Dublin City Council operates several air quality monitoring stations in central Dublin and statistics are available from the council on request. The council's air quality monitoring and noise control unit also publishes an annual report, the latest of which is the annual report for 2002 — 2003. All monitored data to date indicate that Dublin's air quality is good and no national or EU air quality standards in the city were exceeded, except of PM10 levels at College Street where the 24 hour limit to come into force in 2005 was exceeded on more than the maximum number of permitted days. The site in question does not comply with stringent EU and national siting criteria and, as such, is not considered to be representative of the typical exposure of the public to PM10. In comparison, the Winetavern Street site did not breach the PM10 limits in 2002 and all other air quality standards for pollutants sourced primarily from traffic such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and lead were complied with in Dublin in 2002.