Beyond Compliance

The EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement (OEE) ensures that major industrial and waste operations in Ireland comply with their Industrial Emissions/Integrated Pollution Control/Waste licences. For more information see how we enforce compliance

We have launched an initiative to: 

“Acknowledge compliance and promote moving ‘beyond compliance’ at licensed sites”. 

Our Beyond Compliance initiative aims to help operators to do more than their EPA licence requires. It encourages them to:

  • Further reduce their environmental emissions and
  • Improve their performance.  

The OEE will identify and actively acknowledge positive actions that operators take and promote moving “beyond compliance” by:

  • Reporting on beyond compliance in annual enforcement reports and site visit reports, where applicable;
  • Sharing on social media examples of case studies. 

We have already updated our Annual Environmental Report (AER) template to provide operators an opportunity to highlight to the wider public about how they have moved Beyond Compliance. For more information see Annual Environmental Reports. 

Examples of positive actions which could be considered as moving “beyond compliance” include:

  • Anticipating future environmental regulations/policy and acting in advance
  • Acting now rather than waiting to be told do to something
  • Eliminating use of hazardous materials
  • Producing less waste
  • Reducing resource usage (e.g. raw materials, water, energy)
  • Doing more with less
  • Communicating with neighbours and the wider public on positive actions
  • Introducing biodiversity projects