I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell.
Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters
Water Quality
Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as ucht teacht isteach. I am starting to sound like a broken record. I do not know how many times I have come in here with water issues but I will keep going.
The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, only has 11 enforcement officers for the entire country. The most recent EPA report on water shows we still have huge issues with water quality all over Ireland. In my county, we had beaches closed due to E.coli and other issues in recent weeks and a massive fish kill in the Ballymacraven river going into the Inagh river, which goes from Inagh to Ennistymon and Lahinch. That was a 2.6 km complete wipeout, with everything killed along the route.
Things are going wrong and people are getting away with stuff, as they have been for years. Until we have more enforcement officers, the EPA results will not improve. A woman I know has a daughter who got E.coli poisoning and was in hospital again yesterday with kidney issues. They nearly lost her as a young child. This is a very severe issue. I would say we have a water quality emergency in our country, especially in light of the change in rainfall, which, as everybody including farmers will say, has exacerbated the issue.
We have two main issues: wastewater and agricultural run-off. Neither will be solved unless we take them seriously and have enforcement officers and investment in wastewater treatment. Some of our wastewater treatment is non-existent. It is going straight out into our rivers and seas. Some of it is poor at best. We are back in the Dark Ages about it. Water is one of the basic human rights and was one of the top priorities. You cannot have a house if you do not have water infrastructure. Many people get turned down for building housing estates or houses because we do not have the water infrastructure there. If we do not get water right, we do not get housing or health right. I was shocked to see how few enforcement officers are employed in the State. Until that changes, we are fighting a losing battle.
The biggest challenges to quality of water are nitrogen and phosphorus. Wastewater treatment and agriculture are the main sources of those pollutants. People always say it is the farmers but it is not. It is some of the farmers some of the time but we cannot blame all the farmers for this. Until we have proper enforcement, all the farmers will get blamed when it is a minority causing the issue. I defend farmers because many of them are my neighbours. They are not polluting the rivers. We have to call out the people doing this, rather than pitting one against the other and saying it is the farmers’ fault when it is not. Many small farmers do no damage.
There is a huge challenge because of the increased rainfall. We have less topsoil so it is harder for fertiliser to be soaked into the land and there is increased run-off. Rainfall levels have changed completely since the 1980s and 1990s due to climate change. We have storm water going in with the raw sewage for treatment and even the holding tanks are too small. A basic thing is to make holding tanks bigger. Water run-off with heavy rainfall is going into the tanks and we have had fountains of raw sewage. I have photos of it. It is not just in Clare, I am sure. We cannot solve any other issue if we cannot solve our water issue.
We have had serious investment by Irish Water but we have not done enough. That is blatantly obvious with beaches closing, people getting sick and fish kills. We have much more work to do and I would like to hear specifically what is being done around enforcement and increasing access to enforcement for local authorities to prevent this happening.
I thank the Senator for raising this important matter. It is clear from recent EPA reports that water quality trends need to change, particularly, but not solely, in respect of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, being lost from farmlands into our rivers, lakes and coastal areas. I concur with the Senator's view in respect of the farming community, the members of which are doing great work that is hugely important to our sector. As I say, it is all about water quality and not about any particular sector.
Inspection and enforcement is only one part of a wider compliance assurance system. For example, apart from inspection we need to ensure there is knowledge and acceptance of the rules. However, inspection, the possibility of detection of pollution and appropriate sanctions are important factors in protecting water quality.
In March 2022, the fifth nitrates action programme was published. It committed to increasing Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine inspections and to developing an enhanced local authority inspection and enforcement programme, to which the Senator made reference. The Department will increase its inspection of intensive derogation farms from 5% to 10% of farms.
Within the local authority sector, this resulted in the establishment of the local authority national agricultural inspection programme, which is an inspection and enforcement programme, managed and co-ordinated by local authorities with guidance and oversight from the EPA. The EPA is responsible for providing guidance for local authorities on targeting inspections where water quality is impacted or at risk of being impacted from agriculture, tracking the progress of the programme and ensuring that appropriate guidance and training are provided to local authority inspectors.
To ensure the resources are in place for this programme, my Department has been working with the County and City Management Association, CCMA, to identify the existing local authorities’ resources available to undertake agricultural inspections and follow-up enforcement, and to determine the additional staffing resources required to deliver the target of over 4,000 inspections per year. As part of this process, the CCMA has undertaken a review of resources for agricultural inspections and enforcement in each local authority to assess existing resources and skill sets, and to identify additional staffing requirements.
Prior to completion of the review, in 2022 my Department allocated funding of €50,000 to ten local authorities to support the programme. The review has identified that 57 additional staff are required. My Department has taken the review findings on board and, as an initial step, has allocated funding to 17 local authorities to recruit 21 additional inspection posts under the programme. This funding came from the existing departmental budget for 2023. Sanction for funding of additional posts will be examined within the context of the Estimates process leading up to budget 2024.
This is an issue my Department takes seriously. We work in collaboration with the CCMA, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the EPA. Technical advice comes from the EPA. As it stands, of the 57 additional staff, we have given funding to recruit 21. As part of the budgetary process, we will be looking to follow up on the additional staff who have been identified by the review programme carried out by the CCMA.
I thank the Minister of State for his response. Are those 57 additional staff for the EPA or the local authorities? The Minister of State referred to 21 additional inspection posts. We have 30 local authorities so I do not see how that works because we need at least one per county, if not seven. I am curious. We have annual or biannual meetings with the CEO and director of services. I would love to know how many CEOs in the CCMA and local authorities have requested supports because it has never come up in the meetings we have had with our CEO. I am curious as to who is driving this. Who cares about water quality in Ireland? I wonder sometimes.
I thank the Senator. We will continue to engage with the CCMA. I undertake to work with my officials to engage with the CCMA. The CCMA review identified a requirement for 57 additional posts. Funding has been provided for 21 of those. As part of the Estimates process, I will be looking to increase that. I take the Senator's point that there are 31 local authorities in total. We will continue to develop. Local authority resourcing is key to the implementation of this programme. Inspections and enforcement are important components of ensuring we meet the challenge of protecting and improving our water quality. However, as we all know, it must be a sincere collective effort to reverse water quality decline as the causes and the answers are not within the grasp of just a few individual groups or sectors. The Government is working to ensure collective collaboration to the benefit of all.
In summary, I will work with my section to follow up with the CCMA and the local authorities. As part of the Estimates process, I will look for further funding to increase the number of inspectors. The CCMA identified a requirement for 57 additional posts and 21 have been recruited to date.