Rainwater management plans will be developed for farmers taking part in the new €60m water quality European Innovation Partnership (EIP), last week’s Teagasc Signpost webinar heard.

The aim of these plans is to determine the nature of pollution vulnerability from pollution impact potential maps.

The plan will involve identifying farmyard connectivity issues, sloped hard surfaces and potential mitigations by diverting the water away.

This approach facilitates the management of clean water. Following flow pathways across the farm and identifying critical source areas such as around feeders is step two.

The plans will also identify flow delivery areas to address prior to discharge to waterbody, including nature-based measures such as buffer zones.

The scheme’s results-based payment will also encourage improvements in nitrogen use efficiency and reduce nitrogen surplus.

Examples of measures

Some of the measures that are to be included in the EIP are:

  • Small ponds.
  • Targeted riparian margins.
  • Low earthen mounds.
  • Hedgerows.
  • River bank supports.
  • Manage critical source areas.
  • Prevention of cattle access to water.
  • Small bridge works.
  • Methods of reducing N surplus.

    • Hedgerows is one of the measures in the EIP.

    Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory Programme manager Noel Meehan explained that the “access is prioritised and farmers will be approached to make applications”.

    Fran Igoe from the Local Authority Waters Programme explained how agriculture is still the main contributing industry to poor water quality and that a single operation could be the cause of the quality being poor in an area.

    Igoe showed slides about the basic considerations to reduce the pollution risk to water courses, some of these considerations include:

  • Land /location suitability
  • Compliance with mandatory measures requirements.
  • Application of non-mandatory measures where needed.
  • Measures to intercept nutrient pathways.
  • Water stewardship best practice.

    • Meehan advised that the provisional payment rates for the water EIP measures are guided by those already in ACRES and other schemes. However, there will be no double funding on measures, as this EIP “is not an income support scheme,” Meehan advised.

    Questions

    Meehan was asked if farmers are being given enough time to improve water quality. His response to this question was that the “targets are for 2027 and time is running out already. The regulatory measures may not have been given enough time to show improvements in nitrogen loss, but we are still not meeting the targets.”

    He also answered a question which queried if there was enough investment in farmer support to improve water quality.

    He explained that they are “taking the lead of other [schemes] such as ACRES and TAMS; we will see over time if the payments are under- or over-funded.

    “We are trying to give fair payment,” Meehan advised.