{"id":363945,"date":"2026-03-25T07:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T07:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/363945\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T07:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T07:34:07","slug":"cork-co-op-inspected-50-times-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/363945\/","title":{"rendered":"Cork co-op inspected 50 times last year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that environmental compliance at licensed industrial sites was good last year, but persistent challenges remain in the food and waste sectors.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout 2025, EPA officers visited 656 individual sites and carried out 1,681 inspections.<\/p>\n<p>This was 28% more than in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, 96% of inspections were unannounced, with 21 different waste and industry sectors visited.<\/p>\n<p>About 8% were triggered by complaints from the public.<\/p>\n<p>Air monitoring was carried out during 116 inspections, while water or effluent samples were taken in 533 cases.<\/p>\n<p>The North Cork Co-Op Creamery in Kanturk was inspected 50 times by the EPA in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>This was significantly more than any other industrial site in the country.<\/p>\n<p>These inspections at the creamery concerned wastewater discharges into the adjacent Allow River, a tributary of the Blackwater, where the largest fish kill in the history of the State occurred last August.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/2025\/0925\/1535384-cork-fish-kill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The EPA and Inland Fisheries Ireland confirmed, after a major investigation, that discharges from the creamery were not responsible, in any way, for the fish kill.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, earlier this year, the farmer-owned North Cork Co-Op <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/business\/2026\/0305\/1561865-north-cork-creameries-epa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">announced that it was ceasing production and closing the plant because of repeated suspensions of its wastewater discharge license, which was essential for its continued operation.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Arrow Group, the Queally family-owned food and drink company in Co Kildare, was inspected by EPA officers over bad odours on 18 occasions in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>This made Arrow the second most visited licenced site on the EPA list.<\/p>\n<p>ABP meat processors in Waterford, and Eras Eco, a waste treatment and recycling firm based in Youghal, Co Cork, were the joint third most visited industrial sites.<\/p>\n<p>They had 17 EPA inspections each, mainly for bad smells and odour.<\/p>\n<p>Although the food and drink sector receives the most complaints, mainly about odour and noise, sites in the waste sector had the highest rates of non-compliance with EPA licence conditions.<\/p>\n<p>In total last year, the EPA received 1,181 complaints from the public. Most of these concerned odour emissions.<\/p>\n<p>The food and drink sector accounts for 51 per cent of all complaints.<\/p>\n<p>Just five sites accounted for nearly two-thirds of all complaints received from the public.<\/p>\n<p>The EPA said it has investigated these sites and is taking appropriate enforcement actions.<\/p>\n<p>Ten licensed sites were identified as National Priority Sites for environmental enforcement in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The EPA said these ten priority sites accounted for 39% of all complaints, 12% of all non-compliances detected, 8% of all site inspections, and 13% of new investigations last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that environmental compliance at licensed industrial sites was good last year, but&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-363945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}