Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has dismissed speculation that EPA licensing could be applied to intensive dairy farmers.

“There are currently no plans to impose EPA licensing beyond current requirements,” Minister McConalogue told Fianna Fáil TD James O’Connor in response to a parliamentary question on Tuesday night.

A public consultation period on the next Nitrates Action Programme review is due to commence “shortly”, the minister said. It will run for eight weeks.

EPA licensing had been mooted as a possibility for derogation farmers, a prospect which was described as being “tantamount to using a sledge hammer to break a nut” by the IFA dairy chair Tom Phelan.

Pig farmers were first subject to integrated pollution control licensing by the EPA in 1997. With licensing costing several thousand euro per year, pig farms are subject to strict controls on animal numbers, odour production, noise and slurry use.