Local Authorities must effectively prioritise enforcement resources to protect and improve the environment
The prioritisation of enforcement resources on waste activities delivered improvements and positive environmental outcomes, such as the detection and cessation of illegal waste activities.
Local authorities did not adequately prioritise their enforcement resources to water, air and noise in 2023, with poor inspection rates and follow up actions.
Farm inspection rates are far below the level required to drive compliance and improve water quality.
Local authorities need to ensure that only approved solid fuels are available for sale, to protect public health from harmful air pollutants.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has today published its report on the environmental enforcement performance of local authorities in 2023. The report shows that the scale of environmental enforcement work carried out by local authorities in 2023 was significant. Across the 31 local authorities, 547 staff handled over 70,000 environmental complaints, carried out over 212,000 environmental inspections, undertook 17,000 enforcement actions and initiated 470 prosecutions.
Environmental Enforcement Activity & Performance. Tipperary sadly well down the list.
The EPA’s Local Authority Performance Framework measures and reports on performance against National Enforcement Priorities, focused on improving environmental compliance and achieving positive outcomes for water quality, air quality and waste management.
The EPA’s assessment of local authority environmental enforcement performance in 2023 found that eight local authorities achieved a Strong or Excellent score in 17 or more of the 20 National Enforcement Priorities (NEPs). These were Kildare, Meath, Dublin City, Monaghan, Carlow, Cork County, Donegal and Wicklow County Councils. For the second consecutive year, Kildare County Council were 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, which was the highest level of Excellent scores of all local authorities. Dublin City Council achieved a Strong or Excellent score in 16 of the 17 NEPs that apply to their functional area.
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.
Commenting on the findings of the report, Dr Tom Ryan, Director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said: “The effective enforcement of environmental law is essential to identify polluters and non-compliant operators, and to hold them to account. Local authority leadership is critical in delivering better environmental outcomes through the prioritisation of environmental enforcement and the appropriate allocation of resources.”
Water Enforcement: Agriculture continues to have a significant impact on water quality, resulting in excess levels of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) to enter our waterways. Mr Patrick Byrne, Programme Manager of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said: “While the number of local authority farm inspections increased by 9% to 1,137 in 2023, 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. We’re calling on local authorities to use their full suite of enforcement powers to drive compliance with the Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) Regulations and improve water quality.”
Air & Noise Enforcement:
In 2023, local authorities assigned a much lower level of resources to air and noise enforcement (8%) than waste enforcement (63%) and water enforcement (29%). 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. 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.
In 2023, many local authorities made little progress on implementing their Noise Action Plans (NAPs), 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. Local authorities, in collaboration with transport infrastructure bodies, need to focus implementation of NAPs on the priority areas identified using strategic noise mapping.
Waste Enforcement: Waste generation continues to grow and recycling rates for municipal and plastic packaging waste streams need to increase urgently to achieve 2025 targets. For household & commercial waste, waste collectors are required to provide a 3-bin waste segregation service. Local authorities must target areas with low use of the 3-bin service where provided, to maximise waste recovery.
Local authorities need to target waste enforcement actions to drive compliance with the new national by-product criteria for greenfield soil and stone and waste recovery levy regulations, to reduce construction and demolition (C&D) waste.
The Local Authority Environmental Enforcement Performance Report 2023 is available HEREon the EPA website.
In total seven sites have been identified as National Priorities for enforcement by the EPA in Q3 2024.
Seven Sites were identified as National Priority Sites in Q3 2024; three were from the Food & Drink Sector, two from the Intensive Agriculture Sector, one from the Waste Sector and one from the Anaerobic Digestion Sector.
The most common issues identified at these sites were non-compliant discharges to water and facility management.
A site’s presence on the National Priority Sites List indicates a poor level of licence compliance.
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) published its National Priority Sites list for quarter three, 2024. The National Priority Sites (NPS) System is a system of performance-based indicators to rank industrial and waste licensed sites in order of priority for enforcement. This allows the EPA to target its enforcement effort at the licensed operators with the poorest environmental performance.
Commenting on the publication, Dr. Tom Ryan, Director, EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said: “Our enforcement activities are risk based and we prioritise sites that are not complying with their licence. As noted in the EPA’s recent State of the Environment Report, a disproportionate number of sites on the National Priority Sites list have been from the dairy processing and waste sectors. This trend continued in Quarter 3 2024. The seven sites on the current list will be the subject of targeted enforcement action to ensure that the environmental issues are addressed, and compliance is restored.”
MsPamela McDonnell, Programme Manager of the EPA’s Industrial Licence Enforcement Programme said: “Three of the sites on the National Priority Sites List, North Cork Co-Op Creameries Limited, Tipperary Co-operative Creamery Limited, and Aurivo Consumer Foods Limited, are milk processing sites. Each of these has featured on the National Priority Sites List previously. Milk and milk effluent pose a significant risk to local streams and rivers if it is not carefully managed. The dairy sector must prioritise investment in environmental controls to prevent the discharge of polluting material. This remains a priority issue for the EPA”.
Other sites on the National Priority Sites list also pose a risk to water quality. The waste sites on the list include a non-hazardous waste transfer station and an anaerobic digestion facility. Both sites failed to provide sufficient infrastructure to protect groundwater and surface water.
Similarly, at the two intensive agriculture sites on the list, poor management of waste and storm water increased the risk of contaminated discharges.
The list of National Priority Sites for Q3 2024 is in Table 1 below:
Public Support For Climate Action Remains High Across Ireland.
New EPA Climate Opinion Maps show that, similar to previous findings in 2022, there remains a high level of consistency across Ireland in terms of climate change attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviours.
People across Ireland continue to be in almost full agreement that climate change is happening, and large proportions of the population are worried about it.
On most topics, there remains no discernible difference between urban and rural areas, and there is majority support for all surveyed policies nationally.
An emerging divergence was noted between Dublin and other counties regarding support for taxing fossil fuel-powered cars, and a slight fall in support for banning fossil fuels for home heating in the northwest.
People in counties with a history of environmental risks such as flooding, water shortages or wildfire, show an increased awareness of the potential impacts of these risks resulting from climate change.
Check out the EPA Climate Opinion Maps to see where your County stands on Climate Action.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has today released updated interactive maps of Ireland that show national, regional, and county-level data about people’s climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences and behaviours. This is the third output from Wave 2 of the Climate Change in the Irish Mind study, undertaken in 2023 by the EPA and the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication in support of the National Dialogue on Climate Action.
Speaking about the new climate change opinion maps, Dr Eimear Cotter, (Director of the Office of Evidence & Assessment) said: “The interactive climate opinion maps make the EPA’s Climate Change in the Irish Mind data accessible to a wide audience across Ireland. These maps show nationwide acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change, and strong support for most climate action policies, with minimal variation based on where people live, and that most climate attitudes were resilient in the face of cost-of-living increases. However, we also see that public understanding of the causes of climate change is limited and varies between counties. In some counties, less than half of the population understands that climate change is human caused, compared to about six in ten in other areas.”
While the overall picture of support for climate action is high and largely consistent across the country, there are slight regional variations in the level of support for some policies such as the banning of peat, coal, and oil for home heating. Support is highest in urban areas, and weakest in the North-West and border regions. A similar pattern is evident for policies to increase taxes on cars that use petrol and diesel.
People tend to be worried about known region-specific risks from climate change. For instance, a higher percentage of people are worried about water shortages in Dublin and the Mid-East region than the rest of the country. However, water pollution remains a widespread worry for eight in ten people across all counties.
Speaking about the maps, Dr Tara Higgins, (Programme Manager, EPA Evidence Programme) said: “It is encouraging to see that most people across all parts of Ireland believe we have a collective responsibility to act on climate change. It will be important to understand and address people’s concerns about some climate action policies – such as moving away from fossil fuelled transport and home heating. These latest climate opinion maps are a valuable resource for climate policy decision-makers, researchers, the media, non-governmental organizations, and students. We encourage people to use these maps to explore opinions on climate change and worries about climate risks in their own county and region.”
EPA launches new Quarterly Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Ireland, which show greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 2.2 per cent in Quarter 1 of 2024.
The EPA launched a new series of quarterly greenhouse gas emissions for Ireland to support more frequent monitoring of national and sectoral progress on climate action.
Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions were down 2.2 per cent (306 kt CO2eq) in Quarter 1 2024 compared Quarter 1 of 2023.
Electricity emissions were down 16.7 per cent (-312 kt CO2 eq) driven by reductions in fossil fuel use and increased importation of electricity.
Agriculture emissions were down 2.6 per cent (-129 kt CO2 eq) due to reduced lime application to soils and lower milk output.
Transport emissions were up 2.7 per cent (78.2 kt CO2eq) driven by increased sales of petrol (+9.6 per cent) and diesel (+1.3 per cent).
Emissions from commercial and household buildings increased by +5.8 per cent (+126.0 kt CO2 eq) due to increased demand for heating and a decrease in the price of gas.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has today published quarterly greenhouse gas emissions for Ireland for Quarter 1 of 2024. This is a new series of quarterly greenhouse gas emission indicators which will support early and more frequent monitoring of progress on climate action. The data show an overall reduction of 2.2 per cent in the first three months of 2024, compared to the same quarter last year. The largest sectoral decrease in emissions was observed in electricity generation with a reduction of 16.7 per cent (-312 kt CO2 eq). Emission reductions were also observed in the Agricultural (-2.6 per cent, -129 kt CO2 eq) and Industrial (-4.7 per cent, -69 kt CO2 eq) sectors.
Welcoming the report Dr Eimear Cotter, Director of the Office of Evidence and Assessment, EPA said: “These quarterly greenhouse gas emissions respond to an on-going need for more timely and frequent data on Ireland’s greenhouse gases. Ireland joins a small number of countries worldwide to carry out this type of assessment, which will provide valuable early and frequent indicator data for the monitoring and governance of Ireland’s climate action. The series will complement the national greenhouse gas inventory and projections prepared annually by the EPA”.
Commenting on the findings, she added: “The reduction of 2.2 per cent in Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions in the first quarter of 2024, when compared with the same period last year, is welcome following the largest annual reduction in emissions outside of recession reported in 2023. This shows that we can make progress in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions when concerted action is taken.”
An increase in greenhouse gas emissions for transport (+2.7 per cent), commercial (+4.1 per cent) and residential buildings (+6.1 per cent) in Quarter 1 of 2024 shows the clear link between increased energy demand, largely delivered by fossil fuels, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Also speaking about the results, Ms Mary Frances Rochford, Programme Manager of EPA’s Climate Programme said: “These findings signal the continued impact of climate action and decarbonisation measures across Ireland’s economy and society. The assessment on a quarterly basis also highlights the impact of market prices and weather conditions. We see reduced emissions from the electricity sector linked to increased renewables and interconnection, increases in emissions from heating associated with lower fuel price and cooler temperatures than quarter 1 2023. Poor weather conditions also impacted lime application to soils which led to lower emissions from the agriculture sector.” The Quarterly Greenhouse Gas Emissions Indicators for Quarter 1 of 2024 is available on the EPA website HERE, and the EPA Greenhouse Gas web resource is also available online HERE.
A reminder to all our Thurles readers, on Saturday next, October 19th, 2024, a Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment[ WEEE ] authorised collection point will be located at Mid Tipp Co-Op Mart, Ballycarrane, Thurles, Co. Tipperary [Eircode E41 V974] from 10:00am – 4:00pm.
A weee collection will also be located at Cahir Co-Op Mart, Cashel Road, Cahir, Co. Tipperary, [Eircode E21 HC78] on Sat 2nd Nov 2024, from 10:00am – 4:00pm.
As most readers by now are aware, this service is totally free. But do remember, WEEE material is mostly anything with a plug normally attached. They will accept: TVs and their Aerials, Radios, Microwaves, IT Equipment, Printers, Dishwashers, Cookers, Fridges, Freezers, Power Tools, Vacuum Cleaners, Battery Operated Toys, Electric Toothbrushes, Kettles, Toasters, Batteries, Energy Saving Lightbulbs and other associated items.
Check your sheds and garages and rid yourself of unwanted and untidy clutter.
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