Monitoring & Assessment: Freshwater & Marine Publications

The Quality of Bathing Water in Ireland 2013

An Overview for the year 2013

Summary: Overall the quality of Ireland’s bathing water quality remains very high, with 97 per cent of bathing waters complying with the EU mandatory values and achieving at least ‘Sufficient’ water quality status in 2013. 114 bathing waters met the stricter guideline values achieving ‘Good’ status. The warm, dry summer in 2013 aided a return to normality compared to the wet season of 2012 where only 91 of 136 waters met ‘Good’ status.

Published: 2014

ISBN: 978-1-84095-543-9

Pages: 23

Filesize: 1,156 KB

Format: pdf

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Key Findings

• The quality of Ireland’s bathing waters remains very high, with 97 per cent of identified bathing areas (131 of 135) meeting the EU mandatory standards and classed as being of ‘sufficient’ water quality status. This is comparable to previous years.
• 84.4 per cent of bathing waters (114 of 135) met the stricter EU guideline standards and were classified as being of ‘good’ status compared to just 67 per cent (91 of 136) in 2012.
• Six local authorities achieved ‘good’ status for all of their designated bathing areas accounting for 38.5 per cent (52 of 135) of bathing areas.
• Just 4 bathing waters (1 inland and 3 coastal) failed to comply with the minimum mandatory standards and were classified as having ‘poor’ quality status.
• Projections of bathing water status from 2014 onwards, when the system of classification will introduce a new class of ‘Excellent’ water quality, suggests that around 2/3rd of Irish waters will meet this top category.