THE ENVIRONMENT WATCHDOG has warned that councils are not doing enough to enforce water, air and noise pollution rules – with Galway, Waterford City and Sligo among those criticised as “not good enough”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that while performance in waste enforcement improved, local councils did not do enough to check farms and businesses are not polluting water and air quality.

It said the number of farm inspections was too low, while councils need to do more inspections of solid fuel producers and retailers to ensure only compliant fuel is being sold, following the 2022 ban on smokey coal in all counties.

The EPA has urged local authorities to prioritise enforcement resources in order to protect and improve the environment.

“The effective enforcement of environmental law is essential to identify polluters and non-compliant operators, and to hold them to account,” Dr Tom Ryan, director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement, said.

According to the report, 547 staff members across the 31 local authorities handled over 70,000 environmental complaints in 2023. They also carried out over 212,000 environmental inspections, undertook 17,000 enforcement actions and initiated 470 prosecutions.

The EPA looked at how each local authority was performing in relation to the 20 National Enforcement Priorities (NEPs). These come under four themes: water, waste, air and noise, and governance processes.

Each NEP is scored according to a four-point scale: excellent, strong, moderate or limited. 

Eight local authorities achieved a strong or excellent score in 17 or more of the 20 NEPs last year. These were Kildare, Meath, Dublin City, Monaghan, Carlow, Cork County, Donegal and Wicklow County Councils.

For the second year in a row, Kildare County Council was the only local authority that achieved a strong or excellent score across all 20 NEPs.

Meath County Council achieved an excellent score in 15 NEPs and a strong score in 4 more NEPs, while Dublin City Council achieved a strong or excellent score in 16 of the 17 NEPs that apply to their area.

However, six local authorities failed to achieve a strong or excellent score in 10 or more of the 20 NEPs. These were Westmeath, Galway City, Waterford, Wexford, Sligo and Kilkenny County Councils.

“This level of performance is not good enough and needs to improve,” the report states.

The report states that agriculture continues to have a significant impact on water quality, resulting in excess levels of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) entering our waterways.

Patrick Byrne, programme manager of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said that while the number of local authority farm inspections increased by 9% to 1,137 last year, “the number is still too low”.

“More farm inspections and follow-up enforcement is needed to reach the National Agricultural Inspection Programme target of 4,500 farms inspected in 2025, to improve water quality,” he said.

The rate of non-compliance for inspections was 37% last year, up from approximately 31% in 2022. According to the watchdog, the main reasons for non-compliance were storage/management of soiled water, farmyard manure and slurry, and discharges with potential to impact water quality.

Noise enforcement

The report states that local authorities assigned a “much lower level” of resources to air and noise enforcement (8%) than waste enforcement (63%) and water enforcement (29%) last year.

According to the watchdog, whilst Ireland’s air quality met EU standards in 2023, it did not meet the health-based WHO guidelines and there were “concerning localised issues which led to poor air quality”.

It said a strong inspection campaign of solid fuel producers and retailers is needed by local authorities to make sure only approved solid fuels are available for sale and to protect public health from harmful air pollutants. 

The report also found that many local authorities made little progress on implementing their Noise Action Plans, which are aimed at reducing people’s exposure to transport noise.

“Greater action is needed to reduce the impact of noise pollution on people’s health and wellbeing,” the report states.

Waste

The EPA also found that waste generation continues to grow and recycling rates for municipal and plastic packaging waste streams need to increase urgently to achieve 2025 targets.

It states that recent interventions – such as the Deposit Return Scheme and the statutory roll-out of the organic waste collection service – “are positive developments that need to be fully implemented in the transition to a circular economy”. 

The EPA said that local authorities must target areas with low use of the three-bin service.