The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has said that the latest water action plan demonstrates the scale of work underway in agriculture to improve water quality.
Minister of State with responsibility for nature Malcolm Noonan yesterday (Thursday, September 5) launched the ‘Water Action Plan 2024: Ireland’s third River Basin Management Plan’.
The plan sets out a roadmap to restore Ireland’s waterbodies to ‘good’ status or better, and protect against further deterioration in the period from 2023 to 2027, through an integrated catchment management approach.
Among the actions contained in the plan are tighter controls on the use of fertilisers that impact water quality, a greater focus on compliance and enforcement with over 60 new staff at local level, and a target or 4,500 farm inspections per year.
Water quality
IFA National Environment Committee chair John Murphy said that the action plan shows the amount of work already underway nationally and at farm level to improve water quality.
“The breadth of new measures and actions that have been implemented in the last number of years by farmers and the wider industry to improve water quality is significant,” he said.
The plan sets out the range of new measures that have been introduced under the fifth Nitrates Action Plan (NAP) and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan.
It also includes targeted programmes such as Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory Programme (ASSAP) and the Water EIP that work directly with farmers reduce nutrient losses and support action.
“The Water Action Plan shows the drive of farmers and the wider industry to deliver improvements in water quality. The recently launched Better Farming for Water, an industry wide campaign is just one such example,” Murphy said.
The IFA Environment chair stressed that there is “still a significant body of work to be done to deliver on the programme of measures set out in the plan to 2027 for agriculture”.
However, he said that the scale of change and the pace of which measures are being implemented to minimise farming’s impact on water quality needs to be recognised.
“Great strides are being made but there is no room for complacency,” the IFA National Environment Chair concluded.