Drennan hits out at ‘double standards’ on water pollution

Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) president Denis Drennan has criticised the State’s approach to water pollution on the back of a report which found that wastewater discharges are a significant pressure on water quality.

Drennan referred to an incident in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Urban Wastewater Treatment report for 2023, where 4.7 million litres of untreated sewage was pumped into the Cavan river through an equipment malfunction at an Uisce Éireann treatment plant.

Pumps at the plant failed to work for over a week, resulting in the pollution.

The EPA said in the report that “raw sewage creates and unacceptable risk to the environment and public health”.

Double standards

The ICMSA president said that urban wastewater is a major source of pollution and farmers believe that “brazen double standards” are applying on water quality.

He claimed that the State and Uisce Éireann had adopted a “sure these things happen” attitude to water pollution incidents. Drennan contrasted this approach with what he termed was the “energetic pursuit of individual farmers over breaches – whether inadvertent or not – of nitrates regulations and other rules around stocking densities deemed to have consequences for water quality”.

He said this policy had farmers being threatened with being put out of business if water quality doesn’t improve.

“No farmer in Ireland, he noted, would ever be allowed to attribute his or her actions to a vague ‘systems failure’ nor would they be allowed a timeline of years – decades even – to make good and fix a malfunctioning system or piece of equipment,” he said.

The farm leader also questioned why Uisce Éireann employees were being paid an average bonus of €6,500 when wastewater discharges from some of the company’s treatment plants do not meet the standards set out in its EPA licences and over 400 sewers do not meet national standards to limit pollution.

Attitude

“This is just the latest in a long line of jaw-dropping incidents and malfunctions and, bluntly, at this stage that record and attitude is undermining the national drive towards better water quality.

“It’s just not good enough. Either Uisce Éireann and other State outfits are told that they have to meet the same standards and rules as the rest of us – or the rest of us are given the kind of ‘pass’ and latitude and timeline that Uisce Éireann and the State seems to want for itself. It’s one or the other,” Drennan said.

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