OVER HALF OF local councils queried will need to substantially increase their farm inspections of slurry spreading and management in order to meet targets set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this year.
This investigation by Noteworthy also found that most councils only inspect a tiny proportion of farms in their area, while two councils included on the EPA’s list did not conduct any planned inspections of farms last year.
Fifteen councils will have to more than double their farm inspections in 2024, with the increase required to meet EPA targets in some areas surpassing 600%. Two local authorities will also have to increase their inspections tenfold if they are to reach targets.
We can also reveal that some local authorities are falling far behind in 2024 and will struggle to meet their targets before year end. Several councils that provided partial data to us for 2024 have completed less than 20% of their inspection targets more than halfway through the year.
Slurry is an organic manure made of livestock animal refuse. It is high in nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and ammonia – and close to 40 m tonnes of it is spread across almost 90,000 farms in Ireland.
However, while essential to farm productivity, it contributes significantly to ammonia, nitrous oxide and methane emissions, and irresponsible spreading of slurry has led to considerable water pollution and biodiversity loss.
Noteworthy sent Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) requests and press queries relating to the management of farm waste, including slurry and manure, to all local authorities, with the exception of Galway City and Dublin City Council, who weren’t included in the EPA’s targets.
In addition to low inspection levels, Noteworthy found that close to two dozen counties don’t hold key information around fertiliser spreading.
That includes the fact that most councils do not know the number of farmers in their catchment area that spread slurry.
Noteworthy, the crowdfunded community-led investigative platform from The Journal, supports independent and impactful public interest journalism.
The EPA told Noteworthy that “agriculture is the primary source of nitrate losses to water and contributes a significant proportion of phosphate losses”.
The European Union, to mitigate the effects of agriculture on water quality, introduced the Nitrates Directive in 1991 which regulates the storage and spreading of slurry. The regulation also mandates how and when this liquid manure can be spread and managed.
The Directive led to the establishment of good agricultural practices (GAP), a set of regulations that provide a “basic set of measures to ensure the protection of waters”.
In Ireland, these regulations are monitored and enforced by local councils, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI), the EPA and the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (DAFM).
The EPA assessed how councils performed inspections in 2022 and found that only four county councils, Carlow, Meath, Fingal and Kildare, achieved the standard set by the National Enforcement Priorities (NEP).
“More local authority farm inspections and follow-up enforcement is needed to reduce the impact of agricultural activities on water quality,” the agency stated in a report released late last year.
It told Noteworthy, “while the number of local authority farm inspections increased during 2022, the number was still too low”. In 2022, only 943 initial inspections were conducted by local authorities.
Data obtained from local authorities showed that over 2,700 farm inspections took place in 2023, though this figure also includes follow-up inspections and investigations undertaken off the back of complaints so the number of initial, or planned, inspections was lower.
Roughly half of these inspections were also carried out by just two councils, Cork County (932 inspections) and Limerick (404 inspections), meaning that there were low inspection rates across many local authorities.
For example, just eight inspections were carried out in Offaly last year, while in Carlow there were just 14. Both counties have been set targets of over 100 inspections by the EPA this year.
Two county councils, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Waterford, did not undertake any planned inspections of farms in 2023, with the latter telling Noteworthy it “had no dedicated resource to carry out farm inspections prior to 2024. Inspections were carried out following complaints depending on staff availability.”
This year, the EPA requires Waterford to carry out 136 inspections, while Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown will only have to conduct 27 inspections, due to its largely urban environment.
Our investigations also found that only a few councils inspected compliance with the Low Emission Slurry Spreading (LESS) scheme last year. This scheme provides grantees aid to purchase modern, less polluting machinery to spread liquid manure.
We also asked all local authorities, except the three city councils, for statistics on farms that spread slurry.
20 out of the 28 councils we reached out to told us that they did not know the number of farms within their area that fell under the Nitrates Directive derogation.
The data, they said, is held by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine (DAFM).
When asked by Noteworthy for this information, a spokesperson for DAFM said that across Ireland in 2022, “6,393 farmers were approved for a Nitrates Derogation” and that data for 2023 was “not yet fully finalised”.
They added that the number of farmers in a county “are not essential pieces of data that would be required in advance in order to properly conduct an on-farm inspection. Local Authority and DAFM inspectors make their assessment of compliance when they go out on inspection.”
Our investigation also found that for many councils, only farms that are found to have committed a serious breach in compliance are cross-reported to DAFM.
When this occurs, financial penalties can be imposed, or farmers may lose their nitrate derogation and be ineligible to apply in subsequent years.
Data provided to Noteworthy from several councils showed that some cross-reported all of the non-compliances to the DAFM, while other councils cross-reported as little as less than 10% of non-compliant farms.
From this, it was not clear what level of breaches were being cross-reported by each council.
When we asked DAFM if there was a standardised system to record the scale of non-compliance on farms, a spokesperson said “the Department has in place a comprehensive set of inspection procedure manuals.”
They also added that local authority inspectors are provided with training “ensuring that all Inspectors are kept up to date with the latest procedures and requirements under the GAP Regulations.”
Dr Elaine McGoff, head of advocacy with An Taisce said these regulations are not strong enough.
“The Good Agricultural Practice regulations are not fit for purpose. Even if they were properly enforced, they’re still not going to achieve what needs to be achieved.”
McGoff said that the regulations address phosphorus pollution, doing little for nitrogen.
“Ireland has a nitrogen problem with a phosphorus solution,” she added.
However, Teagasc research officer Shaun Connolly, who specialises in manure management, said that the GAP works “relatively well”.
“It strikes a good balance between reducing emissions, reducing water quality issues, but also getting the results that farmers want as well.”
For the first time, the EPA has set local authority targets for initial farm inspections.
These targets are decided on a “risk-based methodology and ensures that inspections are focussed in water bodies that are not achieving their Water Framework Directive status and where agriculture is the significant pressure,” a spokesperson said.
The Government’s recent Water Action Plan 2024 states “agriculture is the most common significant pressure impacting 1,023 water bodies” and proposes these new inspection targets as a measure to improve water quality.
The EPA told Noteworthy that its rollout of the National Agricultural Inspection Programme “will increase the number of inspections carried out, with the 2025 target representing more than a four-fold increase from the number of farms inspected in 2022″.
However, these new targets still amount to less than 4% of the total farms reported to use slurry in 2024 and increase to just over 5% in 2025.
Some argue that this is not enough.
Sinéad O’Brien, a co-ordinator with the Sustainable Water Network (SWAN) – an umbrella organisation of twenty-five national and local environmental groups – said “even if they take a risk-based approach to the inspections, at such a paltry inspection rate they’re just not going to inspect the number of farms that need to be”.
Furthermore, just six councils surpassed or met their 2024 targets in 2023, meaning most local authorities will have to see vast improvements in the number of farm inspections this year if they are to meet the targets set.
Westmeath and Offaly will have to increase their farm inspections by 1,750% (from 2 to 37) and 1,238% (from 8 to 107) respectively in order to meet the targets set by the EPA.
Both Carlow and South Dublin County Council will also have to inspect over 600% more farms this year.
The sharp rise in the number of inspections required is partly due to the lack of staffing resources available to councils to conduct inspections before this year.
In 2022, the County and City Management Association (CCMA) undertook a review of local authority resources available for agricultural inspections and found that just 11 full-time equivalent (FTEs) inspectors were available nationally.
The report recommended that 57 additional inspectors needed to be recruited to undertake the 4,500 farm inspection target set by the EPA.
In response to a query from Noteworthy, the Department of Local Government said it had “allocated funding for 21 Local Authority staff in 2023 and a further 36 staff in 2024, to work specifically on the National Agricultural Inspection Programme”.
“It is now the responsibility of each Local Authority to ensure the resources are in place to ensure that the EPA targets are being met,” a spokesperson added.
While local authorities are hiring more support dedicated to conducting farm inspections, data provided to Noteworthy of farm inspections so far this year show that some councils are falling far behind and will struggle to meet their targets before the end of the year.
Several councils that provided partial data to us for 2024 have completed less than 20% of their inspection targets more than halfway through the year.
This includes Westmeath County Council, who required the largest increase over 2023 and has yet to inspect any farms so far this year.
A spokesperson told Noteworthy this was “due to a lack of resources” and that “preparations are underway to complete our target of 37 inspections by the end of 2024″.
Leitrim County Council are also lagging behind, with just 4 of their 46 inspections completed so far.
A spokesperson for the council said there are “a number of vacant posts in our Environment Department” adding “a full internal review of the overall inspection schedule of the Environment Department and targets will take place in the coming weeks, with a view to meeting the set targets by year-end”.
They also said the vacant posts will be filled “in the coming weeks” and on the appointment of these additional staff resources “inspection numbers will increase significantly from current levels”.
When asked whether the EPA was concerned that local authorities will fail to meet their inspection targets for this year, a spokesperson said “it would be premature for the EPA to comment at this stage”, adding that the recruitment process for local authority inspectors was still ongoing.
The EPA also did not respond to a query relating to consequences for non-compliance with the targets, such as fines or sanctions.
Some, however, believe that inspections might not be the right solution.
Maurice Deasy, a Teagasc researcher and farmer said “I’m a farmer, and the amount of inspections and red tape and hassle is unbelievable,” adding: “I don’t know what benefit it would have for water quality.”
He said constant water quality monitoring is a better solution, “rather than just inspecting and causing time and hassle for farmers and for councils and cost”.
Deasy said that slurry is not the issue. The issue is how it is being spread.
“It’s not the cow, it’s the how,” he said.
“I think if we were to monitor the water, we could have a much better and more progressive discussion with farmers about when exactly we should use this manure.”
However, ecologist and environmental campaigner Pádraic Fogarty said that the volume of slurry in Ireland is cause for concern.
“The climate is changing much faster than our policies,” he said.
According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ireland has over 7.3 m cows, 5.9 m sheep and 1.6 m pigs. While Teagasc lists that Ireland has over 70 m chickens.
This, Fogarty said, is the issue.
“That is a constant stream of waste that the lands just can’t cope with. It’s just too much… The overriding problem is the number of farm animals.”
He also said that Low Emission Slurry Spreading (LESS) farming is worse for water “because it’s putting more slurry straight into the ground”.
“It’s very good for reducing the emissions of ammonia gas. But it’s worse for water quality,” he added.
O’Brien added that increased enforcement, while welcomed by SWAN, does not address the core issue.
She argued that some areas, such as the Boyne, the Barrow and the Blackwater require such a reduction in nutrients that even with “all the enforcement officers in the world doing all of the farm inspections with all of the farmers coming out squeaky clean, that reduction would not be achieved”.
Instead, dairy farmers should be supported to de-intensify, O’Brien said and environmental risk assessments to be undertaken on all intensive farms with “intensification only permitted if it can be demonstrated that it won’t impact water quality”.
Recent data shows that water bodies including the Cork Harbour, New Ross Port in Wexford and the Boyne Estuary in Louth have shown an increase in phosphate levels.
In response to a query by Noteworthy, Inland Fisheries Ireland shared data which showed that since 2020, thousands of fish deaths could be directly or partially linked to “discharge or effluent arising from agricultural activities”.
Grassroots community-led groups are trying to help mitigate water pollution in their areas.
The Boyne River Trust is a not-for-profit organisation based in Meath. Muireann Lyons, a part-time development officer with the group said that the Boyne’s “water quality has declined in recent years, rather than improved”.
A recent report from the EPA shows that 34% of the river and 10% of the groundwater from the Boyne catchment is ‘poor’ quality. Agriculture was listed as one of the reasons for this.
The Trust is working along with farmers in the area to address issues. “We’re at the talking stages with local farmers. There’s a lot of interest there,” Lyons said.
“We’re talking with farmers about things like fencing off their land so that the cattle aren’t encroaching on waters, installing some fencing around ponds or wetland areas to maximise water replenishment… [checking ] their irrigation systems are fit for purpose.”
More resources for farm inspections are being allocated. Many councils that shared information with Noteworthy said that the number of farm inspectors employed has increased in the last four years.
Noteworthy reached out to the Department of Local Government to understand why it had taken until 2024 for vital resources to be put in place for farm inspections.
A spokesperson for the department told us a local authority inspection programme was in place for years, but over the course of the Covid period, inspection numbers decreased.
Following this, they added, the “EPA was given an oversight role and the current National Agricultural Inspection Programme was established”.
What toll is slurry spreading taking on our health and nature?
By Conor O’Carroll & Suhasini Srinivasaragavan of Noteworthy
Noteworthy is the crowdfunded investigative journalism platform from The Journal. This project was proposed and funded by our readers.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say