Caroline Hurley argues that the EPA can and should be doing more to protect Ireland’s vital environment and biodiversity.
Situated between the North Atlantic’s main storm tracks, Ireland has always been vulnerable to the weather. In the Royal Irish Academy’s 2020 collection of essays on Climate and Irish Society from prehistoric times, John Sweeney, a Professor of Geography at Maynooth University, explains that while the country was historically a prisoner of climate, struggling to ensure sufficient food, fodder and fuel, the relationship is now reversed. Irish society has lagged in confronting climate change but is now waking up with better monitoring, more public awareness, activism, and international agreements.
Environmental protection makes multiple demands. As natural ecosystems degraded during the twentieth century, international climate bodies such as The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were established. Five years later, the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded in 1993, following the enactment of the EPA Act 1992 and the completion of the first national environmental impact assessment.
What Does the EPA Do?
According to its website, the EPA commits to delivering good environmental outcomes, based on the best knowledge, regulation, and advocacy. It conducts R&D, issues licences, and is the national body for environment enforcement, strategic review, and water management. As an EPA staff member explained: “We provide knowledge through targeted and timely environmental data, information and assessment to inform decision-making. And, we work with others to advocate for a clean, productive and well-protected environment”.
The EPA measures the quality of air, drinking and wastewater, freshwater and seawater, and shares guidance on radiation, noise, climate change and the circular economy. In terms of services and regulated activities, the EPA’s wide remit includes authorising activities impacting the environment or human health. “We carry out monitoring of the quality of our air, our freshwater, groundwater and marine waterbodies and our use of natural resources. Through our research and development programme, we are generating the knowledge and expertise needed to protect and manage Ireland’s environment”.
The dearth of environmental representatives, including EPA members, on key State Boards significantly reduces the chance of changing the business-as-usual narrative
However, these assurances were challenged by Gerry McGovern in a two-part report on mining published by Hot Press last April, revealing that 28% of the Republic’s total land area is currently cleared for mining prospecting.
McGovern states that “A normal member of the public, stressed out with enough worries, will instinctively assume that if the EPA thinks it’s good for the environment, or doesn’t object to it, then everything must be ok…those illusions were badly shaken by almost everyone I spoke to who is opposed to new mining licences being handed out in Ireland”.
In 2018, Village highlighted contamination of the Silvermines area and called for a Superfund to clean up 450 polluted sites around the country.
After talking to people affected by pollution of land, air and water, particularly in Tipperary and Limerick, McGovern warns of the hazards of light-touch regulation:
“The primary role of the EPA is to support government policy. And government policy is to encourage and facilitate mining. As a result, the EPA ends up in the curious – and many would say contradictory – position of having to defend mining activities and interests”.
The EPA claims to be a technical rather than political body. Although nominally independent, it derives funding from both government and industry licensing fees. Largely, for now, the EPA generates information for others making decisions, rarely taking preventive or protective action yet, despite its mission statement.
If EPA resources are being mobilised for goals besides and perhaps antithetical to environmental protection, the problem of decarbonisation logjams makes more sense. Despite the organisation’s expert teams qualified to be watchdogs and leaders, restrictions mean it may be left to precarious independent researchers to expose truths and demand change. Meanwhile, silent policy affords cover to get rich quick merchants who have no quibbles about inflicting long-lasting environmental ruin.
Limits of the EPA
The dearth of environmental representatives, including EPA members, on key State Boards, such as Teagasc and the IFA, significantly reduces the chance of changing the business-as-usual narrative. Given the crisis unfolding before us, every policy and decision made across the public-private spectrum should be subject to environmental impact analysis. Conflicting considerations of consequences for wildlife are illustrated by the ESB’s plans for hydroelectricity, and laying of astroturf pitches around Dublin.
While the EPA can assess toxicity levels and air quality, for example, it is limited in uncovering the potential health implications of its assessments: “Any research, studies or investigations into the risk or health implications associated with exposure…is a public health matter and so it would be dealt with by public health officials or researchers in this area, which is not within the remit of our organisation”.
The problems continue underwater too. Earth scarring by mining on land is more visible than the rapidly spreading technology of sea mining. This industry is already inflicting environmental damage. Interfering with water routes interferes with biodiversity. Offshore wind farms are not exempt from negative impacts on ocean life either.
According to a 2019 OECD report on pharmaceutical residues in freshwater: “Laboratory and field tests show traces of oral contraceptives causing the feminisation of fish and amphibians, and residues of psychiatric drugs altering fish behaviour…[and] antimicrobial resistance”.
A 2022 paper for the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Journal reinforces these points: “Overall, the results show that API (active pharmaceutical ingredients) pollution is a global problem that is likely negatively affecting the health of the world’s rivers. To meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, work is urgently needed to tackle the problem and bring concentrations down to an acceptable level”.
Crayfish studies illustrate biodiversity imbalances caused. Levels of carcinogenic chemicals in drinking water are raising concerns too. Researchers have discovered microscopic plastic particles in the fats and lungs of two-thirds of the marine mammals in a study of ocean microplastics.
Challenges mutate and multiply.
The Environment of the Future?
With transnational corporations outgrowing countries, the structural governance of society is in crisis. Revelations that trusted parties are defrauding taxpayers, such as allegations that PwC misused confidential US government tax information for commercial gain, emerge daily. Greenwashing is abundant, sowing confusion and reaping profits. Ecological transition requires that we, “change our lifestyle, question the model of development, and production, as well as the industrial society itself and the knowledge bases on which all Western science is based”.
Largely, for now, the EPA generates information for others making decisions, rarely taking preventive or protective action yet, despite its mission statement
In recent months, the American EPA (the first EPA, founded in 1970) has issued an unprecedented number of anti-pollution regulations to minimise toxic water, planet-heating emissions, and other environmental harms, even as right-wing interests stand by to roll back at the earliest opportunity. But this is the right direction.
A UN ‘summit of the future’ planned for 2024 aims “to forge a new global consensus on multilateral solutions to current and future problems”, citing the Maastricht Principles on the Human Rights of Future Generations.
Everyone knows by now what the problems are.
Ireland needs an EPA that is willing and able to capitalise on its powers to administer the solutions.
