Sir, - I was heartened by your report (The Irish Times, May 30th) regarding the conversion of the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Fahey, to the realisation of the negative impact of intensive farming on our national waterways. This was in sharp contrast to the flippant, irresponsible and gratuitously offensive letter from the IFA representative, Francis Fanning (May 29th), in response to Roderick O'Sullivan's on the same issue (May 18th).
For those who have any difficulty understanding the deterioration in Irish water quality, one must point out the huge numbers of animals involved (8 million cattle, 2 million pigs, 9 million sheep approximately). The faecal output of these animals is spread, untreated, on the grasslands of Ireland. The quantity is too great for the area involved and this results in an ever-increasing level of pollution of our waterways. Only reduction or treatment of that faecal load will result in an improvement. This is a simple mathematical fact.
The REPS scheme has resulted in a stabilisation, but not a significant reduction, in animal numbers. Thus there has been no change in the mass of animal faeces and fertiliser applied to Irish grasslands and our waterways continue to deteriorate. I trust this explanation will help those in the IFA and the Department of Agriculture who have expressed amazement at the EPA's recent documentation of our deteriorating national water quality and the widespread faecal organism contamination of ground water schemes in rural Ireland. These circumstances are particularly sad in light of the fact that intensive animal husbandry in Ireland is fundamentally non-viable without EU export subsidy support, as negotiated under the CAP. This EU scheme forces our farmers into intensive farming and produces the ludicrous situation whereby farmers, on islands within Lough Corrib itself, are forced to cut silage and spread slurry which is then washed into the lake by the West's liberal rainfall. To cap it all we have recently designated the Corrib as an EU Special Area of Conservation with the attendant responsibility of preserving its water quality.
It is about time we adopted an integrated plan for sensitive catchments with subsidies directed towards appropriate non-damaging farming practices. It is the responsibility of the Ministers for the Marine, Environment and Agriculture to develop a competent effective strategy before further irreparable damage is done - Yours, etc.,
D.S. Quill, M.Ch., FRCSI, Flood Street, Galway.