The Government's record on pollution control continues to worsen. The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, is about to chalk up another failure where the implementation of EU standards is concerned. Last week, the European Commission threatened to take Ireland to the Court of Justice in Luxembourg for failing to protect our rivers and lakes from farm-based nitrate pollution.
Ireland is the only EU member-state that has not designated any nitrate-vulnerable zones, in spite of evidence that many inland and coastal waters are suffering seriously from agricultural pollution. Because the zones were not identified, no remedial action programmes have been adopted.
Ireland is now eight years in default of anti-pollution measures it signed up to in Brussels and the Government is still dragging its feet on this and other environment protection laws. The latest threat of court action from Commissioner Margot Wallstrom caused a spokesman from the Department of the Environment to promise that the necessary designations would be made before the end of the year. We have heard it all before.
Four years ago, the Economic and Social Research Institute proposed a system that would punish polluting farmers. Ireland is the only EU country with a zero VAT rate on fertilisers. The ESRI urged that VAT should be charged in future and that farmers would be able to reclaim it in the usual way, provided they showed their lands were not being over-fertilised. Although non-polluting farmers would be no worse off under the scheme and it would cost little to implement, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, failed to take action.
Meanwhile, the overall standard of water quality continues to decline with major, intermittent, fish kills and toxic algal blooms in the midland lakes. Many group water supply schemes are grossly polluted and up to 10 per cent of the State's drinking water schemes are regarded as unsatisfactory by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). The threat of legal action and heavy fines by the European Commission is embarrassing and damaging because we rely on a clean image to promote tourism and food sales. But the presence of high nitrate levels in drinking water also threatens the health of infants.