‘Nowhere farmers can hide’ as ammonia emissions fines pile up

"We're within our nitrates limits, but we're in breach of our ammonia target and we have been since 2016, and we have fines building up," he said.

"The fines for breaching our ammonia target are as bad as breaching the Nitrates Derogation."

Today's News in 90 seconds - 24th September 2024

Ireland's ammonia emissions are non-compliant with the National Emissions Reduction Commitment for 2020, driven by emissions from manure and fertiliser use in the agriculture sector.

Ireland must reduce ammonia emissions to 5pc below 2005 levels from 2030 onwards (107kt). In 2022, emissions were up 3pc at 128.6kt.

The EPA has said it is possible to achieve compliance with the 2030 emissions reduction commitment for ammonia through full implementation of planned ammonia reduction measures, such as low emissions slurry spreading and use of inhibited urea fertiliser products.

"About half of nitrates comes from agriculture, but with ammonia, it basically all comes from agriculture. There's nowhere to hide with ammonia," said Prof Lanigan.

"The real issue around slurry is ammonia, and if it's pig slurry, phosphorus run-off."

​Researchers acknowledge the potential for 'pollution swapping' when applying liquid manure using surface band-spreading or injection methods as compared with the traditional broadcast surface spreading.

Concerns centre around a reduction in ammonia through LESS leading to the saving exchanged for an increase in nitrification and denitrification emissions as nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, or as nitrate and other leaching losses to water.

"There might be a little bit extra nitrate loss from LESS, but it's not going to be huge and it's going to be far less than the impact of the ammonia emissions associated with splash-plating slurry," said Prof Lanigan.

"If you splash-plate slurry on a sunny day, 80pc of the nitrogen is going to go up into the atmosphere, which blows our ammonia targets, and also it's a loss of nitrogen to the farmer.

"Uptake, particularly of trailing-shoe technology, has been a great success. We also had the concern that if you improve the amount of nitrogen going in, you'd have more nitrous oxide coming out, but we haven't found any difference.

"I've seen videos of guys up the north that are putting things on the end of their LESS to turn them essentially back into splash plates. It's ridiculous."