Local authorities have been told to get tougher on environmental offences after members of the public made 76,500 complaints about illegal dumping, water pollution, noise and smells last year.
Just over 18,000 enforcement actions – such as warnings and orders – followed, and 414 cases resulted in prosecutions.
But while the latest report on enforcement activities in city and county councils showed they conducted more inspections and investigations in 2024 than in previous years, they still did not hit targets.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) review says they need to be on-site more often and applying regulations more vigorously.
RM Block
“Strong enforcement of environmental laws is essential to detect pollution and ensure that those who break the rules are held responsible,” said Dr Tom Ryan, EPA director of enforcement.
“Local authorities play a vital role in safeguarding our environment.
“This report shows that most local authorities are responding to the challenge, but some such as Leitrim, Galway City, Sligo, Clare and Donegal are lagging behind and need to do better.”
One area the EPA says needs greater attention is the protection of rivers and lakes from pollution.
Local authorities are responsible for carrying out farm inspections to ensure manure and farmyard wastewater does not run into adjoining waterways but only 2,598 inspections were carried out last year when 4,500 is the target.
Local authorities are also in charge of monitoring discharge licences granted to commercial premises to release wastewater into rivers.
The EPA says they should be doing more to ensure compliance with licence conditions.
“This area lacks prioritisation and many local authorities did not demonstrate action on discharge licences that are identified as a significant pressure on a waterbody,” the report says.
‘Misconnections’ in urban sewage systems is also a source of water pollution. A misconnection occurs when a foul drain is incorrectly plumbed to the surface water network, causing pollution of local rivers and streams.
The report says “activity on misconnections varied” with some local authorities proactively checking for them while others only acted on foot of a complaint or incident.
Most complaints were about dumping, but the report shows the introduction of regulations to allow use of CCTV at known dumping sites could help tackle the problem.
Codes of practice for the use of CCTV were agreed last year and Longford County Council became the first local authority to install monitoring cameras.
As a result, 37 offenders were issued with fines, 31 of them being identified from their vehicle registrations.
The EPA is also asking local authorities to do more to enforce air quality regulations.
It said inspections of solid fuel merchants to ensure products met smokeless fuel standards increased last year but the high level of non-compliance was of concern, particularly for coal products found breaching sulphur content limits.
“Further enforcement action is needed to drive compliance in this area.”
