Ireland faces EU charges on water controls

Despite two legal warnings from the EU, Ireland has failed to provide sufficient controls on groundwater pollution and now faces court action from the European Commission.

The Commission decided yesterday to initiate the proceedings under the 1980 Groundwater Directive in the EU's Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Continued failure to integrate important parts of the directive into Irish law could eventually result in the Government being fined.

The specific concerns of the Commission are the failure by the sanitary authorities to prohibit the discharge of specified substances, such as mineral oil and hydrocarbons, into groundwater, and the failure to put in place a system of prior investigation and authorisation for discharges of various heavy metals, phosphorous, ammonia, and nitrites.

A Commission source said that although there are general concerns about groundwater pollution in Ireland, this legal action is not related to specific events but to a failure to implement the full directive despite "reasoned opinions" in 1990 and 1997. Reasoned opinions are the legal equivalent to a shot across the bows.

A spokeswoman for the Department of the Environment said the Department was studying the implications of the Commission's decision but that the discharge of untreated waste water into groundwater was "very exceptional".

Last month the European Commission issued a reasoned opinion under the Wild Birds Directive against the Government over its failure to protect the habitats of the red grouse and Greenland white-fronted goose from overgrazing on vulnerable peatlands in Ireland's largest special protection area, the Owenduff-Nephin Beg complex in Co Mayo.