asked the Minister for the Environment the action he proposes to have taken in the light of the information to hand that more than 50 per cent of beaches surveyed recently do not measure up to EC Directives on the quality of bathing water.
Written Answers. - Quality of Bathing Water.
98.
I presume the question relates to a survey of bathing waters conducted by the European Organisation of Consumers' Associations which was the subject of a statement issued last week by the Consumers' Association of Ireland. I issued a comprehensive response to this statement yesterday. The following is the text of my statement:
Quality of Bathing Waters
A statement issued by the Consumers' Association of Ireland (CAI) last week about the quality of Irish bathing waters was said today (21st) by Padraig Flynn T.D., Minister for the Environment to be misleading, potentially damaging to Irish tourism and likely to cause unwarranted concern about health effects among Irish bathers.
The CAI appears to have completely misinterpreted and misrepresented both the provisions of the EC Bathing Water Directive and a survey carried out for the EC Commission. This study, according to the CAI statement, was designed "to establish the extent to which the quality of the seawater at a selection of Irish beaches, 15 in all, complied with the EC Directive on the Quality of Bathing Water". The fact is that, by reference to the mandatory standards of the Directive, a proper assessment of the results shows that all 15 areas surveyed have bathing water of very high quality. There is no evidence, in the results presented, of any breach of the Directive.
The CAI statement on the results points out that mandatory and guideline values are set by the Directive. However, its assessment of the results ignores this fact. It is the mandatory values which must be met but the CAI assesses water quality only on the basis of the guideline values. These latter are up to 20 times as strict as the mandatory values and are only in the nature of targets which EC countries should aspire to achieve. They are not, in any country, the standard by which compliance with the Directive is assessed. Failure to reach the guideline values does not mean that sewage pollution is in excess of EC standards or that there is any health risk to bathers.
The survey on which the CAI statement appears to be based establishes its own classification system for the quality of waters, from "very good" to "unsatisfactory". This system does not conform to either the mandatory standards or the guidelines values in the Directive and no other basis for it is suggested either by the CAI or the authors of the survey. The Minister has today raised this matter directly with the EC Commissioner concerned, Mr. Stanley Clinton Davis, and has expressed his concern that criteria which have no standing in EC terms should have been used to judge compliance with established EC standards. The Commissioner has undertaken to examine the matter.
If standards other than the mandatory EC standards are to be used to judge the quality of bathing waters, the appropriate ones are the national standards laid down by the Member State in compliance with the EC Directive. These national standards are required to be at least as stringent as the EC mandatory standards. In Ireland, the national standards laid down in 1979 are twice as stringent as the mandatory standards for total coliforms and faecal coliforms — the parameters which are mainly used to detect the presence of sewage in waters. These strict Irish standards are almost universally met at Irish beaches and are completely ignored in the CAI statement. The CAI statement is particularly misleading in its comments on particular beaches. For instance, at Duncannon, Co. Waterford (sic), Laytown, Co. Meath and Clogher Head, Co. Louth, levels of sewage pollution were said to be particularly high but the survey results do not substantiate this. At Clogher Head, for example, the highest result obtained for total coliforms is almost 20 times better than the mandatory EC standard and 10 times better than the Irish standard. Monitoring by Meath County Council and Wexford County Council at Laytown and Duncannon last summer confirmed the excellent quality of bathing water at these locations.
Again, in relation to heavy metals, the CAI comments are totally misleading. There is no EC standard for the levels of heavy metals in bathing water but the levels found in Irish waters were low to moderate by any standards. In fact, the highest Irish value for mercury was the lowest maximum for any country except Portugal where the maximum was roughly the same.
Last April, the Minister requested local authorities to increase significantly the number of bathing areas where water quality is monitored. Local authorities have responded positively and it is the Minister's intention to make regulations shortly giving full statutory effect to the Directive on the Quality of Bathing Waters at an increased number of bathing areas. At present, the Directive applies only to Portmarnock, Dollymount, Courtown, Tramore, Fountainstown, Kilrush and Salthill. The mandatory standards have been met by all of these areas with the exception of Dollymount in 1986 and 1987 when the level of compliance with the standards for total coliforms and faecal coliforms was just below that required by the Directive. However, the small margins by which these standards were exceeded at Dollymount do not represent a health risk for bathers. It remains the Minister's objective to reduce further the level of pollution in our coastal waters. Local authorities have invested over £200 million since 1983 in sewage schemes providing new and improved systems for the disposal of treated effluents and the abatement of pollution. Much of this investment has directly benefited coastal waters. Investment in sewage treatment works will continue to have a high priority in the sanitary services capital programme.
Finally, the Minister notes that the CAI plan to publish the results of the beach pollution study in the May issue of their magazine. "I hope that, before doing so, the Association will take steps to inform themselves of the basic facts and will not repeat the misleading and ill-informed comments included in their recent statement," concluded the Minister.