Donegal County Council has been rated highly in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) report on the environmental enforcement performance of local authorities in 2023.
They stated that eight local authorities achieved a ‘Strong’ or ‘Excellent’ score in 17 or more of the 20 National Enforcement Priorities (NEPs). These were Donegal, Kildare, Meath, Dublin City, Monaghan, Carlow, Cork County and Wicklow County Councils. For the second consecutive year, Kildare County Council was the only local authority that achieved a Strong or Excellent score across all 20 NEPs.
The report shows that the scale of environmental enforcement work carried out by local authorities in 2023 was significant. Across the 31 local authorities, 547 staff handled over 70,000 environmental complaints, carried out over 212,000 environmental inspections, undertook 17,000 enforcement actions and initiated 470 prosecutions.
The EPA’s Local Authority Performance Framework measures and reports on performance against National Enforcement Priorities, focused on improving environmental compliance and achieving positive outcomes for water quality, air quality and waste management.
Commenting on the findings of the report, Dr Tom Ryan, Director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said:
“The effective enforcement of environmental law is essential to identify polluters and non-compliant operators, and to hold them to account. Local authority leadership is critical in delivering better environmental outcomes through the prioritisation of environmental enforcement and the appropriate allocation of resources.”
