Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

194 Chapter 8: Water Figure 8.3  Percentage of waters in each ecological status by surface water body category, 2016–2021 1% 3% 1% 1% 0.1% 18% 32% 42% 8% 10% 21% 38% 31% 11% 50% 18% 18% 17% 36% 45% Rivers Lakes Transitional waters Coastal waters ˜ High ˜ Good ˜ Moderate ˜ Poor ˜ Bad . Source: EPA, 2022 Figure 8.4  Proportion of monitored surface water bodies achieving or failing to achieve good chemical status, 2016–2021 Chemical status (including ubiquitous substances) Chemical status (excluding ubiquitous substances) ˜ Good ˜ Fail 50% 50% 12% 88% Source: EPA, 2022 High status objective water bodies. Waters that are in high status are our cleanest and healthiest waters. They are significant biodiversity reservoirs and increase the resilience of our ecosystems to environmental damage. In some areas, we depend on these highest quality waters to increase the aquatic biodiversity in the more degraded areas downstream when water quality has improved. The protection and restoration of high status objective water bodies is therefore an important water quality objective. In Ireland, 334 rivers, 41 lakes and 27 transitional and coastal water bodies have a high status objective, commonly known as Blue Dot waters. Of these 402 high status objective water bodies, only 175 are currently in high status. This represents a failure to protect our most pristine water bodies over the last 20 years. These water bodies need to be protected and, where necessary, restored. Groundwaters. With a few localised exceptions, the quality and quantity of groundwater in Ireland is generally good (Figure 8.5): 92% of groundwater bodies are in good chemical status and over 99% are in good quantitative status. Overall, 91% of bodies met both objectives, accounting for 97% of the country by area (69,519 km 2 ).