The European Commission has warned the Government that pollution-control measures introduced in the past three years to counter increasing water pollution in Irish rivers and lakes are inadequate.
The failure to arrest water-quality deterioration has resulted in the Commission issuing a second warning notice following its first warning issued in 1997. Full details of the Commission position are due to be published later this week in Brussels.
In a letter to the Department of the Environment, the Commission is understood to have cited "serious concerns" about phosphorus pollution in particular which, it says, has resulted in a decline in water quality of numerous lakes and rivers since the 1970s.
While the Commission acknowledged some steps had been taken by the State in response to the earlier warning, it is not satisfied at what is being done to prevent pollution and warned that more radical action is needed.
It is almost certain this will be the final warning notice served on the State. Failure by the Government to respond adequately will result in legal action in the Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
The Government has two to three months to reply. It is understood that at present the Environment Directorate-General is strongly of the view that the Irish authorities should be brought to court.
Last night a Department of the Environment spokesman said "a supplementary reasoned response" (warning) had been received by it on July 28th. He confirmed that the Department was preparing a response to be submitted later this month.
The EU said there was a general failure by the State to consistently reduce serious pollution by dangerous substances of lakes, such as Loughs Sheelin and Ramor in Co Cavan, and a failure to avoid the emergence and worsening of phosphorus pollution elsewhere as required under directive 76/464/EEC.
It has also expressed concern at the new criteria being used by the Environmental Protection Agency to determine water quality. Water defined as polluted under EU regulations is treated as unpolluted or "satisfactory" under the EPA's classifications.
Water quality in the Republic's largest lake, Lough Corrib, is deemed by the EPA as satisfactory. Yet the Commission noted the collapse or disappearance of a rare, pollution-sensitive fish species, the Arctic Charr, there.
Mr Tony Waldron, adviser to the Carra/Mask/Corrib Water Protection Group, said the warning came as no surprise. "Having tracked the decline over years, we have no hesitation in stating this matter will not be properly addressed until far more radical and stringent measures to curb the main sources of pollution are put in place, or the Commission proceeds with the final stage and takes full legal action against Ireland for allowing this serious decline," he said.
based on Chlorophyll levels mainly and not other criteria as had been used in the past, Mr Waldron said: "This allowed for poorer quality Irish water to be classified as satisfactory. This is totally unacceptable to us."
The Commission, he added, had accepted the merits of a series of objections raised over the past three years by angler interests.
While moves to introduce "catchment management" planning (where all inputs into a river system are evaluated) and phosphate-control regulations were worthy efforts, they simply were not enough, said Mr Waldron, who has lodged a series of formal complaints in Brussels on behalf of the water protection group and the Trout Anglers' Federation of Ireland since 1994.