PLANNING SOME SEA swimming? You’ll be happy to know that there’s been year-on-year improvement in the quality of Ireland’s bathing waters.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released its annual report on bathing water quality and it says 2024 saw the highest number of bathing sites classified as ‘excellent’ of the last ten years.

122 bathing sites – 81% – were given the top grading of ‘excellent’, the highest number of ‘excellents’ given since the current classification system began in 2014.

Additionally, the number of beaches with ‘poor’ bathing water quality dropped from five in 2023 to just two in 2024.

Those beaches were Lady’s Bay in Buncrana, Donegal and Sandymount beach in Dublin.

Discharges from wastewater overflows, contamination from dog fouling and foul drain misconnections are the main problems lowering the water quality at those beaches.

The three beaches that were considered ‘poor’ in 2023 and have since improved are Balbriggan (Front Strand) in Dublin, Trá na mBan (An Spidéal) in Galway and Loughshinny in Dublin.

Bathing water quality was high overall in 2024, with 96% of bathing sites (145 of 151) meeting or exceeding the minimum standard.

There were 34 pollution incidents reported to the EPA last year, a drop from 45 in 2023, and 79 warning notices erected at beaches about potential short-term pollution, which was down from 149 in 2023. 

Despite the improvements, the EPA cautioned that heavy rainfall continues to impact Ireland’s bathing waters by causing runoff of contaminants from lands and overflows from wastewater treatment systems.

It is calling on local authorities to build climate resilience into managing bathing waters.

“We are happy to bring a positive news story on our bathing water quality for 2024, which is overall very good,” said Dr Eimear Cotter, director of the EPA’s Office of Evidence and Assessment.

“However, heavy rainfall during another bathing season has emphasised the need to build climate resilience into the management of bathing waters. Heavy rainfall in the west and north-west last August especially resulted in many beaches being closed to protect swimmers’ health,” she said.

“Local authorities must step up their efforts to improve their understanding of causes of pollution from heavy rainfall and how this impacts beaches. This is also important outside the official bathing water season as more and more people are enjoying outdoor swimming all year round.”

Three new bathing water sites were identified in 2024. These were The Cove in Greystones, Wicklow, Half-Moon in Dublin and Dromineer Lake in Tipperary.

Half-Moon was given an ‘excellent’ rating, while the other two are awaiting classification.