The EU has accepted Ireland's application for a derogation to the controversial nitrates directive, which will allow farmers to use higher amounts of livestock manure on lands than provided for in the directive.
The directive, which was opposed by farmers for over a decade, allows for the spread of 170kg/ha of animal manure. It came into force earlier this year. Yesterday, the EU committee of experts on nitrates approved an application from Ireland to allow, in certain cases, the spread of up to 250kg/ha on Irish grassland farms on an individual basis.
The Government had promised to seek this derogation when the farming organisations opposed the 170kg limit on the basis that it would severely disadvantage about 10,000 of our most commercial farmers involved in dairying. The issue led to a rift between the farming sector and the Government and sparked the withdrawal of all but one of the farming organisations from the partnership talks earlier in the year.
The farm organisations said that an EU-wide limit of 170kg per hectare to protect ground water quality was too low for Ireland, where soils and farming conditions were different to those in the rest of Europe.
The Irish taxpayer was eventually faced with daily fines for not implementing the directive, which was eventually signed into law last January by the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche.
He had been under pressure from environmentalists and health experts to implement the directive, which imposed nitrate limits for the first time and also controlled the times at which fertilisers could be spread.
In August last, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that approximately 23 per cent of groundwater locations it had examined in 2005 exceeded the national guidelines value for nitrate concentration for drinking water and 2 per cent breached the mandatory limit.
"Elevated nitrate concentrations were recorded in monitoring points close to potential point source waste discharges. However, the spatial distribution of monitoring locations with elevated nitrate concentrations appear to relate to areas with more intensive agricultural practices, which suggests that diffuse, agricultural sources are the cause," said the report.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, said the new decision was a significant development for some of our intensive farmers.
The decision was also welcomed by the president of the Irish Farmers Association, Pádraig Walshe, who said securing the derogation had originally been agreed with the Government in the previous partnership agreement in 2003.
Both he and the Minister expressed disappointment that the derogation sought did not extend to farmers wishing to take in pig and poultry manure from Monaghan and Cavan, where these industries are located.