The destruction of aquatic life by way of industrial pollution in an east Cork river is a further reminder of Ireland's consistent failure to protect its fragile environment. The situation is so bad that the European Commission has decided to bring the Government before the European Court of Justice. The sudden collapse of oxygen levels in water kills fish and industry and local authorities are responsible for about 50 per cent of these high-profile pollution incidents, with agriculture accounting for the remainder. But there is a more gradual erosion of water quality - caused by phosphate enrichment - that goes largely ignored.
Last January, Clare County Council was warned that 19 per cent of the waters surveyed in the Shannon region were moderately or seriously polluted. Last week, there was a major fish kill at Lickeen Lake, which is the main source of the water supply to towns and villages in north Clare. The cause was said to have been an extensive algal bloom. Algal blooms are caused by phosphate pollution, linked primarily to farming. What is important about the Clare incident, is that the algal bloom and fish kill occurred in an area that is not intensively farmed. It is the clearest possible signal that a widespread collapse in water quality will occur unless remedial measures are immediately adopted.
It is not that the Government and the farming organisations are unaware of the problem. For the past number of years, the IFA and the ICMSA have sought to educate their members in the correct use of artificial fertilisers and in the safe spreading of slurry. And successive Ministers for Agriculture and for the Marine have appealed for the responsible use of nutrients. It hasn't worked. The quality of the State's water continues to deteriorate.
The chief officer of the South Western Regional Fisheries Board, Mr Aidan Barry, has said the extent of phosphate pollution in Irish lakes and rivers is now so great that merely educating farmers in nutrient usage would have little effect. Even if stringent targets were met, he said, it would take more than 15 years for many lakes and rivers to be restored to an acceptable condition. At the moment, in efforts to increase productivity and grass growth, Irish farmers are spreading an estimated 150 per cent more phosphates than is actually required. By contrast, Norway has achieved a 40 per cent reduction in its phosphate applications over an eight-year period, through the imposition of a fertiliser tax.
Local authorities are now spending vast amounts of money on sewage treatment; industry is gradually cleaning up its processes under pressure from the Environment Protection Agency and campaigns in favour of using phosphate-free detergents are aimed at householders. But the farming community has not made the necessary adjustments. The Coalition Government and, in particular, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, can no longer avoid their responsibilities in the matter. When education and encouragement fail to reduce fertiliser inputs, the blunt weapon of a tax on nutrients may do the job.