Councillors at the September meeting of the Clonmel Borough District were given a briefing from Fran Igoe of the Local Authority Waters Programme (Lawpro), about how the project is progressing and water quality issues across the county.
In his report, Mr Igoe noted that the water quality across the county dropped significantly, and that Tipperary had seen one of the most significant drops of any county in Ireland.
Responding to a question from Fianna Fáil counillor Siobhán Ambrose, Mr Igoe said that a lot of the reasons for water quality decline can be put down to agriculture.
“Water quality decline in Tipperary, the significant pressure in Tipperary is agriculture, and our job is to try and figure out what kind of agriculture where the hotspots are,” Mr Igoe told councillors.
“Here in Clonmel, you have an issue with tillage as well, particularly during heavy weather events when you have cut your barley or your oil seed rape or whatever it is, if there’s not a buffer, you’ve got a problem then that the silt could move,” he explained.
Measures are available to help farmers to address these concerns, Mr Igoe added, with Lawpro’s Farming for Water programme helping farmers to know what funding schemes they’re entitled to in order to help protect water quality, as well as helping them to apply for these schemes.
“We do have measures to support farmers to address some of these areas, including reducing the number of nitrogen applications, but also putting in these buffer zones, or some nature-based solutions in a rural landscape,” he said.
“There’s a whole range of stuff we can help with, and the funding is quite good, it started off and it was only an average of €3,000 to a farmer, but now the average is between €10,000 and €40,000, so it’s quite significant,” Mr Igoe said.
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme