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\n Photographs of some of the dead fish following the contamination.<\/p>\n
Ailish Keane, Environmental Officer with Inland Fisheries Ireland, told Cavan District Court how she arrived at the scene on July 8 to find the river running an unnatural, murky brown. She took three samples – downstream, at a discharge pipe connected to the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), and a third upstream. While charging her car nearby, she was alerted by a member of the public that the river had \u201cgone brown again\u201d. She returned to take further samples, and recorded \u201celevated\u201d ammonia levels – echoing similar findings from just days earlier, July 4.<\/p>\n
By July 13, the situation had escalated. Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) received a fresh reports: The river was now \u201cvery brown,\u201d with \u201chundreds of dead fish\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms Keane returned and documented the scene, presenting stark photographic comparisons to the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nothing done,\u201d Judge Finnegan remarked pointedly. Ms Keane, giving evidence, agreed. She described dead trout lining the banks near a local amenity park, while the riverbed itself was choked with a \u201cgrey sewage fungus\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat should be green was grey,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
The court heard the incident stemmed from a blockage in the WWTP\u2019s reed bed. When Ms Keane visited the plant, she found maintenance underway on the filtration system and ordered it to stop immediately. Once halted, the pollution ceased within an hour.<\/p>\n
Despite Uisce \u00c9ireann\u2019s guilty plea, Ms Keane warned of \u201congoing issues\u201d at the ageing Ballinagh facility, which she said is now in urgent need of an upgrade. Legal counsel for the Uisce \u00c9ireann (U\u00c9) outlined planned mitigation measures, including a \u20ac2M investment in modular treatment units by early 2027, ahead of a proposed full replacement plant by 2030 or 2031 – at an estimated cost of \u20ac20-25 million, pending approvals.<\/p>\n
The court also heard that the plant, originally built in the 1960s, has undergone some mechanical and electrical upgrades, alongside revised staffing, monitoring, and maintenance protocols.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s all marvellous,\u201d Judge Finnegan responded sharply, questioning what protections are in place in the meantime.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took the pollution and elimination of an entire ecosystem just to get these changes in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t the first time we\u2019ve been on this rodeo,\u201d he added, noting the utility\u2019s history of offences.<\/p>\n
Previous convictions in 2016 and 2019 resulted in fines for similar pollution events on the same river. The maximum penalty available to the court is \u20ac5,000. It was shared that U\u00c9 has further proposed a \u20ac15,000 restitution fund to create new spawning habitats along the Ballinagh River. But Ms Keane cautioned that recovery will be slow: Even if fish spawn successfully next winter, it will take \u201cyears\u201d for stocks to return to pre-incident levels.<\/p>\n
The judge was unequivocal in his assessment: Uisce \u00c9ireann had failed to take past warnings seriously. \u201cLeniency is limited by the lack of action,\u201d he commented, imposing fines of \u20ac4,000 on each of two charges of causing deleterious matter to enter the river on July 8 and 13, striking out a third charge from July 4 but awarding total costs of nearly \u20ac7,000.<\/p>\n
\n Published:
\n Thu 7 May 2026, 10:30 AM\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published: Thu 7 May 2026, 10:30 AM \u201cHopefully this will be the last time,\u201d warned Judge Raymond Finnegan,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[18,440,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-473729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116535575121222302","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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