Local authorities ‘need to try harder’ on water, waste, air and noise

Just five of the State’s 31 local authorities achieved required standards for enforcement of environmental regulations last year, according to the latest report from the EPA.

The Focus on Local Authority Environmental Enforcement – Performance Report 2021 found most local authorities were failing to meet at least 70 per cent of “national enforcement priorities”, when assessed across a range of categories including Governance Processes; Water; Waste and Air and Noise.

Those that scored the highest included Kildare, Dublin City, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Fingal. Nine local authorities which did not achieve the required standard in more than 30 per cent of their enforcement priorities were: Offaly, Mayo, Sligo, Wexford, Waterford, Tipperary, Laois, Roscommon and South Dublin.

The EPA said Waterford City and County “achieved a Limited result” in relation to the Governance Process category as the authority did not submit required data for the 2021 reporting period.

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The EPA found that, in general, the lower performing local authorities deployed the least resources. Leitrim and Monaghan were the exceptions which demonstrated “good targeting and results from a small resource pool, especially in the waste enforcement area”.

The EPA concluded:

* local authorities need to deploy and target resources more effectively in order to improve the quality of air and water.

* Local authorities need to increase the level of farm inspection and enforcement activity to reduce the impact of agricultural activities on water quality

* There is a need for increased enforcement efforts by local authorities on the segregation of domestic and commercial waste and the management of construction and demolition waste, which is the State’s largest waste stream.

* local authorities should prioritise inspections of fuel sellers to ensure only approved fuels are sold nationwide.

In 2021, more than 500 local authority staff handled almost 81,000 complaints and carried out over 205,000 environmental inspections, the report noted.

But Dr Tom Ryan, director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said environmental monitoring by local authorities “needs to improve”.

“The EPA’s report shows that less than half of the 620 performance assessments undertaken across 20 national environmental enforcement priorities achieved the required standard in 2021″ he said.

He said “water quality in our rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters is in decline and there are concerning localised issues that are impacting negatively on the air we breathe. The segregation of waste streams, which is so critical to supporting materials reuse in the development of a circular economy, is not as good as it needs to be.”

However while the EPA was critical of the local authorities, Friends of the Irish Environment was critical of the EPA, saying it was “astonished” that the report did not highlight enforcement in relation to quarries. A spokesman said the issue appeared to be that quarries were not included as a “National Enforcement Priority” when the priorities were set in 2018.

Friends of the Irish Environment called on the EPA to use its powers under legislation and “direct” local authorities to carry out any such actions the EPA considers necessary for the purposes of environmental protection. ‘It is not good enough to bury these Reports as they record a deterioration in enforcement which must be reversed if our climate and biodiversity commitments are to be made real on the ground “, the organisation said in a statement.