The European Commission will postpone a vote on the introduction of Ireland’s nitrates derogation until next March, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue has said.

The current nitrates action programme (NAP), which includes the nitrates derogation, will expire on December 31. Its replacement scheme covering 2022-2025 will not be approved by then.

Addressing the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine (JOCAFM), Minister McConalogue said that Ireland is currently negotiating the next nitrates action programme and working through a process to achieve a new derogation.

“In order to allow these negotiations come to a fruitful conclusion and secure a favourable opinion, a vote on Ireland’s derogation has been postponed until early March 2022.”

He said, by then, Ireland’s new nitrates regulations should be in place.

In 2018, Ireland was granted a derogation to allow intensive farmers a higher stocking rate of livestock manure, subject to them complying with strict rules that are overseen by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM).

The derogation, which is crucial for the dairy industry, in particular, increases the application limit of 170kg/ha of livestock manure to 250kg/ha each year.

In 2019, the DAFM initiated a voluntary review of the nitrates derogation, covering 7,000 farmers who avail of the facility.

Commenting on this, Minister McConalogue said:

“That review introduced additional measures on such farms to improve on farm efficiencies, such as the use of trailing shoe technology and preventing access to watercourses as examples of new measures introduced to reduce agriculture’s impact on the environment.

“Additional measures were also introduced for a further 5,000 farmers in 2021 who do not avail of the derogation but are farming at a similar high level of intensity,” he said.

Minister McConalogue told the JOCAFM that a nitrates expert review group had also been put in place to review the nitrates action programme and to make recommendations on foot of two periods of consultation earlier this year.

He said that review group will conclude shortly.

“The review of the nitrates action programme provides a timely opportunity to review the impact of agriculture on our water environment and support agriculture’s ambition to stabilise and improve water quality while seeking as many co-benefits for climate, air and biodiversity as possible,” he said.