Meeting Water Framework Directive requirements

Amid legal challenges at EU level, as well as the publication of the third River Basin Management Plan (the Water Action Plan), significant changes are taking place in how Ireland implements the Water Framework Directive.

In place since 2000, the Water Framework Directive requires all EU water bodies to meet ‘good’ standard by 2027 via a process whereby EU member states establish river basin management plans.

Since passage, the European Commission has referred a number of EU member states, including Ireland, to EU courts, over alleged failures to meet these standards. For example, the Commission was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in January 2023 for allegedly failing to ensure that trihalomethanes (THMs) in drinking water did not exceed minimum failure levels outlined in the Directive.

In January 2024, the CJEU found that, by failing to ensure that the necessary remedial action was taken as soon as possible to restore the quality of the water, Ireland had failed to give priority to its enforcement action.

EU member states were required to transpose the Water Framework Directive into national law by 22 December 2003. Ireland initially adopted legislation, but the European Commission found this legislation to be insufficient.

Progress had been made on implementation and legislation in the intervening years, but by June 2022, over 20 years after the entry into force of the Directive, the Government had still not fully addressed all of the shortfalls.

The Government has since announced the formation of a committee in Seanad Éireann which will examine the implementation of EU directives, with the objective of avoiding future fines by the European Union for failure to implement, although there has been minimal engagement on European water legislation since this committee was established.

However, the Water Services Policy Statement 2024-2030, published in February 2024, underlines the Government’s commitment to ensure:

• compliance with water-related European Union legislation;
• delivery of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 on clean water and sanitation; and
• implementation of the OECD Council Recommendation on Water.

Commission proposal to revise EU water legislation

In October 2022, the European Commission adopted a proposal to revise the lists of pollutants in surface water and groundwater. The proposal recommends that member states be required to take measures to meet the quality standards for the additional pollutants, and to make their monitoring data available on a more frequent basis.

The new law revises the Water Framework Directive, the Groundwater Directive, and the Environmental Quality Standards Directive (Surface Water Directive). The Commission states that the aim of the revisions is “better protecting human health and natural ecosystems from pollutants”.

MEPs propose that the watch list, which contains substances or groups of substances where there is an indication that they pose a significant risk to human health and the environment, should not be limited to a maximum of substances as proposed by the Commission. This list must, they say, be updated regularly to keep up with new scientific evidence and the fast-evolving pace of emerging new chemicals.

The Environment Committee wants a number of substances to be added to the watch list as soon as suitable monitoring methods are identified, including microplastics, antimicrobial resistant microorganisms and selected antimicrobial resistance genes, as well as possibly sulphates, xanthates and non-relevant pesticide metabolites.

To better protect the EU’s groundwater, MEPs have demanded that the threshold values applicable to groundwater be 10-times lower than those for surface water.

The MEPs further propose creating a subset of specific PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) as well as the PFAS total (parameter which includes the totality of PFAS with a maximum concentration) to be added to the list of groundwater pollutants, as these substances have been detected in more than 70 per cent of the groundwater measuring points in the EU.

In line with this is a demand for stricter standards for glyphosate, bisphenol (bisphenol total), atrazine, pharmaceuticals, and non-relevant metabolites of pesticides.

Pressure to ensure that water quality in the State meets EU standards is high, as the results from the latest EPA Water Quality in Ireland 2023 report show. The report states that levels of nitrogen are too high in 42 per cent of river sites and 20 per cent of groundwaters, and that levels of phosphorus are too high in 27 per cent of river sites and 35 per cent of lakes.

Director of the EPA’s Office of Evidence and Assessment, Eimear Cotter, said in June 2024: “We do see some improvements in some areas, but these are being offset or eroded by declines elsewhere, so overall no net improvement and that is really disappointing…

“Having clean water is not an optional extra; it is not something… that is nice to have. It is absolutely a vital public good and we need to do everything we can to protect what we have and then drive on with further improvements in water quality.”