Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 24 July 2018
2618. Deputy Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government the amount of water being used for irrigation purposes for landscaping other than food production, for example, maintaining animal racecourses and golf courses. [32559/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Water Framework Directive requires that measures are put in place to protect and, where necessary, restore to good status all bodies of surface water and groundwater. Measures must include legal and administrative controls to protect water bodies from excessive levels of abstraction.
In the River Basin Management Plan 2018 - 2021, which my Department published in April 2018, I committed to the establishment of a new legislative framework for the sustainable management of water abstractions, which will include a requirement for the registration of larger abstractions (greater than 25m3/day). The abstraction registration system will shortly go live, and abstractors are required to register over the following four months, detailing their level of abstraction.
As part of the preparatory work in this regard, the EPA has undertaken a quantitative assessment of known abstractions based on best available information and has created a database, which currently includes some 2,630 abstractions. This database will be optimised based on information submitted via the aforementioned register.
While the information requested is not yet fully available, based on the EPA's assessment work to date, it is estimated that some 322 golf courses and 24 horse racing facilities are abstracting greater than 25m3 of water per day.
