Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

255 Chapter 10: Environment and Agriculture and local characteristics’. The total cost of the measures that are required is estimated to be €1.14 billion over the period 2021–2027 (NPWS, 2021). In 2023, the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss (see Chapter 7) agreed on 159 recommendations centred on the need to ‘take prompt, decisive, and urgent action to address biodiversity loss and restoration and to provide leadership in protecting Ireland’s biodiversity for future generations’ (Citizens’ Assembly, 2023). In relation to agriculture, the group agreed 17 specific recommendations, recognising that biodiversity is currently undervalued in our agriculture production system and policy framework and that, as the custodian of the land, the agriculture industry can make the most impact on conserving and restoring biodiversity. The agriculture recommendations focused on key themes such as the need for improved, more ambitious, joined-up policies that are grounded in a community-led, results-based ethos; greater emphasis on managing soil health, growing the organic sector and farming more in tune with nature; and the need for education, awareness and deeper engagement with consumers. Water quality Slightly over half (54%) of Ireland’s surface waters have the good or better ecological status that is needed to support healthy aquatic ecosystems. Under the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), all Member States are expected to have achieved at least good ecological status to support healthy waters in all water bodies by 2027 at the latest. Agriculture is the most widespread pressure causing the impacts – the latest assessment to 2021 found that just over 1000 water bodies were affected by agricultural activities, representing little change since the previous assessment. The key water quality issue arising from farming is the loss of excess nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) from artificial and organic fertilisers to waters. This leads to eutrophication or the excess growth of plants and algae, especially in our estuaries. Nitrate concentrations are too high to protect aquatic ecosystem health in 42% of river sites and in 17% of estuarine and coastal water bodies nationally, particularly in a number of key catchments of concern in the south and south-east (EPA, 2024e). The ecologies of estuaries and coastal waters are particularly sensitive to nitrogen, and the scale of the declines in the quality of these waters since the early 2010s, when nitrogen concentrations were at their lowest in the last three decades, is a significant concern. 5 www.catchments.ie/next-generation-pollution-impact-potential-maps-launched/ (accessed 31 May 2024). Elevated nitrogen concentrations in drinking water can also cause a public health issue, although the nitrate standard to protect drinking water quality is less stringent than it is for protecting aquatic ecosystem health. In 2023, 12 public water supplies had exceedances of the nitrate standards (EPA, 2024f). The main source of nitrogen in our waters is leaching from mineral and organic fertilisers and manures from agricultural activities. Substantial reductions in nitrate leaching will be required in some catchments in the south-east to bring nitrogen concentrations back to where they need to be to support healthy aquatic ecosystems (EPA, 2021). The key types of measures involve reducing the nitrogen surplus, i.e. excess nitrogen lost to the environment, either by increasing the efficiency of nitrogen use so that less is available to leach and/or by reducing the overall nitrogen loading on farm. Measures need to be targeted in the freely draining soils in the catchment areas of water bodies where nitrogen is a pollutant of concern. The EPA has produced a national map to help target agricultural measures to protect and restore water quality (Figure 10.7). The EPA has also developed nitrogen pollution impact potential maps 5 , which are freely available and are being used by the Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO) and the Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advice Programme (ASSAP) to identify the critical source areas, or hotspots, for targeting measures locally within key areas.