Mayo County Council will adopt the new Western and Shannon River Basin management plans, with or without the approval of the elected councillors, the members of the council were told this week at a special meeting. The plans which are required under the EU Water Frameworks Directive, cover the eight river basin districts, three of which are in Mayo.
A number of councillors raised concerns over the report which laid out areas that had to be addressed under the framework which included a finding that 31 per cent of pollution came from agriculture, which Fine Gael councillor Johnny O’Malley said he thought was “unfair to be laid at farmers, when the EU nitrates directives have yet to fully come into effect”. Cllr Al McDonnell told the meeting that he could not support the plan because “there are a number of sweeping statements that have no data to back them up in relation to the levels of pollution in different areas”.
However county manager Joe Beirne said the data was there to back up all the findings in the report and that the councillors would be given hard copies if they wished. He went on to say, “this will come before the councillors at the April meeting for adoption. If you don’t I will have to do it for you. But I wouldn’t be standing over this if I didn’t believe in it, and I believe we can stand over everything in this plan. If we couldn’t I wouldn’t sign it.”
