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Ireland’s Environment 2012
56
The paper on the Reform of the
Water Sector in Ireland (DECLG,
2012) confirmed the strategic
importance of Ireland’s water
resources and signalled the
Government’s intent to take a
national approach to water with the
aim of conserving water resources
and increasing the cost efficiency
associated with water provision.
In April 2012, the Government
announced the creation of Irish
Water as an independent State-
owned subsidiary within the Bord
Gáis Éireann group. It is envisaged
that Irish Water will take over the
water investment programmes of
the 34 county and city councils,
with the key aim of supervising and
accelerating the pace of delivery
of planned investments needed to
upgrade the water and sewerage
networks.
Conclusion and
Future Challenges
Overall, while water quality in Ireland
is good relative to other EU countries,
Ireland faces some considerable
challenges in the coming years to
meet the requirements of the WFD
and other water directives.
The three main challenges for water
quality management are to eliminate
serious pollution associated with
point sources (waste water treatment
plants); to tackle diffuse pollution
(pollution from agricultural activities
and septic tanks); and to use the
full range of legislative measures in
an integrated way to achieve better
water quality. There is a pressing
need to develop site-by-site actions
for the water bodies reported as
being at less than good status. By
prioritising a subset of these each
year, improvements can be made
in rivers in the short term (with a
slightly longer recovery time for lakes
and estuaries). In the longer term,
the formal timelines set out in the
RBMPs for improvements (Table 4.5)
can be achieved even though they
are quite ambitious, provided the
necessary structures and resources
are in place.
However, the current governance
arrangements for the implementation
of the Water Framework Directive
are inadequate. The published River
Basin Management Plans noted that:
“The current administrative systems
are fragmented along administrative
lines and do not facilitate analysis,
identification and implementation of
the most cost-effective solutions to
manage water quality at river basin
level. An RBD can cover the areas
of responsibility of a large number
of bodies e.g. 18 local authorities
in the case of the Shannon RBD.
Furthermore, the implementation of
many of the measures necessary to
achieve the objectives of the plans is
the responsibility of national rather
than local authorities.”
Discussions to resolve this issue are
ongoing between the DECLG, EPA,
local authorities and other relevant
bodies, and these are running in
parallel with the development of
the new model for management
of national water services – Irish
Water. The emerging consensus
of a governance structure for the
WFD is that it would consist of three
interlocking levels with specific roles
identified at each level, as follows.