The European Commission is to take Ireland to court for failing to protect the environment against nitrate pollution from farms. Ireland is the only EU State that has not designated any part of the country a nitrate vulnerable area, nor has it developed an action plan to combat nitrate pollution, even though nitrates are one of the main causes of river and lake pollution in Ireland.
The commission accused the government of taking "an unjustifiably restrictive approach to the identification of nitrate polluted waters". Nitrates are used in agricultural fertiliser and are also found in animal slurry.
Under a 1991 directive aimed at protecting ground and surface water, member states were required to monitor rivers and lakes and identify those polluted by nitrates. The Government was then supposed to designate nitrate vulnerable zones - areas that drain into nitrate polluted waters.
This was supposed to have been done by 1993. Two years later, the Government was required to set up action programmes to control nitrate pollution in these areas from agricultural sources.
But the Government has failed to designate any nitrate vulnerable zones. The commission says that, by not identifying and designating nitrate vulnerable areas, the Irish Government has avoided having to prepare action programmes, and it is the absence of such action programmes that the Commission is challenging in the European Court.
The Commission says that despite evidence that a significant number of Irish rivers and lakes show increasing signs of nitrate pollution - mainly from agricultural sources - Ireland is the only country that has not designated any part of its territory a nitrate vulnerable zone.
It identifies County Waterford as an example of an area where it is proposed to intensify pig production. Yet the local authority has not identified group water schemes and other drinking water sources which are already polluted by nitrates from agriculture.
