A major dairy processor in Co Cork has been fined €8,000 and ordered to pay more than €3,000 in costs and expenses after the company pleaded guilty to two offences arising from an illegal discharge of effluent into a tributary of the river Blackwater last summer.
Milk and butter producer North Cork Co-operative Creamery of Strand Street, Kanturk, Co Cork, pleaded guilty to the incident associated with its wastewater treatment plant into the river Allow at Pulleen, Kanturk, Co Cork, on June 22nd, 2025.
The company, which employs about 100 people, pleaded guilty to one count of causing or permitting polluting materials to enter the Allow on the date in question in contravention of Section 3 (1) of the Local Government (Water Pollution) Act 1977.
It also pleaded guilty to a second count of permitting or causing deleterious matter to fall into the Allow, outside of the terms of a licence granted to the company by the Minister for the Environment contrary to Section 17 of the Fisheries (Consolidation) Act 1959.
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On Monday, at Mallow District Court, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) environmental officer Michael McPartland told how the IFI received a report of a discharge into the Allow and he went out to examine the scene, and he observed a grey liquid discharge coming from a pipe.
The pipe was from North Cork Co-op’s wastewater treatment plant and the discharge extended for some 450m with the riverbed being covered or coated with sewerage fungus and he said that the river became “progressively cloudier” nearer the discharge pipe.
No fish were killed as a result of the discharge and solicitor for North Cork Co-op Sinead Martyn said she wanted to put it on the court record there was “no causal link” between her client’s operations and the fish kill on the river Blackwater in August 2025 that killed 42,000 fish.
Judge Colm Roberts asked if IFI had been able to identify the source or cause of the pollution incident in August 2025 that led to the fish kill, and IFI solicitor Vincent Coakley said investigations into cause of the fish kill were ongoing.
Martyn said her client had invested €1 million in remedial works at its wastewater treatment plant to ensure there are no further such discharges, but Coakley said the co-op’s licence to discharge into the Allow is currently suspended by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Coakley said North Cork Co-op had a number of previous convictions including recently in February 2024 when the company was convicted of eight separate breaches of its EPA licence and it had previously got the benefit of the Probation of Offenders Act on some offences.
The judge said this was not a case that could be dealt with by way of the Probation of Offenders Act and while the company had spent a considerable amount of money on remedial works, they had plenty of opportunities to remedy the situation.
He noted the maximum fine in respect of each charge was €5,000 but he said he would give the company credit for their guilty pleas and he fined them €4,000 on each of the two charges and ordered them to pay IFI costs and expenses of €3,650.
The co-op, which is farmer owned and established in 1928, had annual revenues in 2024 of €211.8m when it processed 248 million litres of milk, producing 7.26 million litres of liquid milk, 19,283 tonnes of milk powders and 16,969 tonnes of butter.
