Waters of LIFE presented findings from the first year of its agri-environmental pilot at EPA Water Conference 2026 in Galway.

Project Manager Anne Goggin spoke to delegates as part of the ‘Restoring Our Waters’ session to close out the conference. The session was facilitated by EPA Water Programme Manager Dr. Jenny Deakin and featured:

• Waters of Life: Anne Goggin, Project Manager, Waters of Life
• Wild Atlantic Nature LIFE IP: Derek McLoughlin, Project Manager, Wild Atlantic Nature
• Atlantic Salmon Trust – hope into action: Prof. Ken Whelan, Vice President & Alison Baker, Restoration Director, Atlantic Salmon Trust

Click here to view the Anne Goggins’ EPA Water Conference Presentation Slide Deck (PDF)

The key takeaway was that RBAPS have a role to play in the delivering for high status water bodies but the following must be considered:

• Riverside specific scorecards
• Greater emphasis on hydromorphology
• RBAPS along not sufficient where nutrients are a significant issue.
• The range of actions available for nitrates is limited.
• A limited range of supporting actions will have most effect in a given scenario and provide best value for money.
• Advisors are key, but we need to address the skills gap.
• We need to achieve buy-in from the farming community through awareness raising, clear messaging and appropriate incentives.

After an overview of Waters of LIFE and its focus on high status objective rivers, the presentation went into detail on Year 1 of the project’s Results Based Agri-Environmental Payment Scheme (RBAPS). The findings of habitat assessments across over 260 farms indicated that:

The majority of assessed holdings across farms in the Avonmore (Wicklow), Graney (Clare/Galway) and Islands (Galway/Roscommon) sub-catchments featured semi-natural habitats with good ecology. The availability of semi-natural habitat was significantly lower in the projects’ demonstration sub-catchments in Cork:

• Avonmore: 1013ha (76%)
• Awbeg (Kilbrin): 1926ha (5.5%)
• Graney: 1668ha (78%)
• Islands: 1575ha (60%)
• Shournagh: 2171ha (5.5%)

Habitats in the Islands sub-catchment were found to be impacted by hydrology – the assessment process recorded 280 plots with active drains across 98 farm farms. A low water table was recorded on 246 plots.

Conclusions from Habitat Assessment included:

• The presence of extensive, healthy semi-natural habitats correlates with low nutrient levels in adjacent water courses.
• The presence of extensive surface drainage correlates with risk of sedimentation.

The project also identified a number of key learnings from the end-to-end testing of habitat assessment in Year 1. These led to re-design of habitat scorecards, including the addition of a separate riverside scorecard for all semi-natural habitats. The purpose is to offer greater incentive to develop healthier riparian zones.

Anne Goggin gave an update on completion of runoff risk assessments on 263 participating farms. The assessment uses the Source-Pathway-Receptor model to identify actions to support water quality and where they should be mapped. Over 2,000 of these supporting actions were proposed by advisors on behalf of participation farmers.

Waters of LIFE staff undertook a review of all proposed actions as part of their screening process and rejected over 50% of proposed actions. This was mainly due to:

• Failure to pass screening for appropriate assessment (more on that here)
• Lack of evidence for obvious water quality benefit
• Marginal water quality benefit that did not represent value for money
• Availability of more suitable actions to address runoff risk

The review also highlighted the need for greater project support for advisors in ensuring the right measure in the right place.

 

Waters of LIFE will be issuing Water Quality Farm Works Plans to participating farmers in the coming weeks. These plans will include a mapped list of all approved and funded Supporting Actions available to the farmer.