The High Court has today (Tuesday, December 12) begun hearing a legal challenge against the government’s fifth Nitrates Action Programme (NAP) taken by An Taisce.
The NAP comprises a range of measures that are intended to protect water quality from agricultural pollution in order to meet the requirements of the European Union’s Nitrates Directive.
Every EU member state is required to devise a new programme every four years which aims to reduce pollution to water bodies caused by nitrates from agricultural sources.
Around 700 submissions were received during the three public consultation periods for the latest NAP which was published in March 2022.
High Court
An Taisce has claimed that successive programmes have failed in their objective as Ireland’s water quality has “continued to deteriorate over the past decade”.
An Taisce claims that the independent environmental assessment of the fifth NAP “acknowledged an uncertainty as to whether the main measures relied upon would adequately prevent water pollution, which could potentially impact on protected European sites”.
“We believe accordingly that there is a clear basis to contend that legal threshold was not met for the measures proposed in the NAP,” it said.
The judicial review proceedings are against the Department of Housing, Heritage, and Local Government, the Environmental Assessment Unit, the State and the Attorney General.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) and Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) are notice parties to the challenge.
An Taisce is represented by FP Logue Solicitors, and counsel are James Devlin SC and John Kenny BL.
There are concerns that Ireland’s nitrates derogation would be impacted if An Taisce is successful in its bid to quash the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage Darragh O’Brien’s decision to approve the NAP.
An Taisce previously said that “this legal step may be misrepresented as some form of attack on the farming community”.
However, it said that the application is borne out of a “longstanding commitment” to ensure that clean water and uncontaminated soil are preserved for future generations.
“It is targeting misguided legal and regulatory structures that are actively contributing to water pollution and which thus must be challenged,” it added.
The case is due to run for four days before Mr Justice Richard Humphreys.