Everyone taking a swim in the sea this summer will be somewhat reassured by the latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the quality of Ireland's bathing waters continues to be "very good", in general.
However, there are still too many places that fail to meet even the minimum standards laid down by the 30-year-old European Union Bathing Water Quality Directive, which has now been strengthened with effect from March 2006. Worse still, even more of our designated bathing places do not comply with more stringent national standards specified in the 1992 Quality of Bathing Waters Regulations for such pollution parameters as total coliforms, faecal coliforms and faecal streptococci. In a society as wealthy as Ireland is now, this is simply unacceptable.
As reported in yesterday's editions, the EPA monitored a total of 131 bathing areas - 122 seawater and 9 freshwater - in the 2005 bathing season and assessed them for compliance with the relevant standards, both EU and national. Although it found that 96 per cent met the mandatory minimum EU standards, only seven of the coastal local authorities were given a clean bill of health for all of their designated bathing places.
A number of persistent blackspots were identified, including two sites in Dublin (Merrion Strand and Sutton Burrow Beach), two in Galway Bay (Clifden and Furbo/Na Forbacha) and Ardmore in Co Waterford. A further seven, including such popular beaches as Bray and Portmarnock, also failed to meet the national standards for faecal streptococci.
Bray is located in the Wicklow constituency of Minister for the Environment Dick Roche, who reacted to the EPA report by noting the "excellent quality" of Irish bathing waters while at the same time saying that we "can never afford to be complacent" about it. Certainly, the investment of large sums of public money in new sewage treatment plants has paid dividends in cleaning up the waters off Dollymount Strand in Dublin and Salthill in Galway. But more needs to be done to deal with the outstanding problem areas by making maximum use of the Department of the Environment's currrent €2.7 billion water services investment programme.
There is also an urgent need to review the number of designated bathing places which, at 131, works out at just 34 per million population - much lower than European norms. Blue Flag beaches are rarer still because of the need not just to maintain high water quality, but also to meet strict standards of safety and environmental management.