Compliant NI farmers face fewer inspections under NAP
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- Northern Ireland's draft Nutrient Action Programme 2027-2030 has opened for a 10-week consultation running until 7 September, after being shaped by a task-and-finish group of 70-plus farmers, scientists, environmentalists and agri-food representatives that met more than 60 times over nine months under management consultant Karen Brosnan.
- Compliant intensive farmers who join the new Nutrient Stewardship Programme — which replaces the existing derogation — would face fewer inspections in return for meeting nutrient obligations, with several paths designed to let them maintain current production levels.
- Ulster Farmers' Union president John McLenaghan, who sat on the group, called the new document "unrecognisable" from the previous draft, which had prompted calls to "scrap the NAP" from farmers who said they had not been involved in shaping it.
- Nature Friendly Farming Network chair Louise Skelly, a County Down sheep farmer, welcomed the NSP but argued polluting farms would likely sit outside the programme and called for "greater regulation for the few that are actually causing a problem."
- Agriculture minister Andrew Muir said the revised NAP is "critical" to improving water quality, explicitly linking it to the nutrient pollution crisis at Lough Neagh and stressing collective action across government beyond farm regulation.
- The NAP, first introduced in 2007 as the Nitrates Action Plan to comply with the EU nitrates directive, was due for its fourth review in 2023 but was not published until 2025 — the backlash to that delayed process triggered this reset.
Why it matters: For Northern Ireland's intensive farmers, the Nutrient Stewardship Programme trades the old blanket derogation for a compliance-based regime — those who opt in see fewer inspections, but as Louise Skelly warned, the plan's environmental payoff depends on tighter enforcement on the minority who stay outside it. Muir has tied the package to tackling the nutrient crisis at Lough Neagh and wants executive approval before this Assembly mandate ends, leaving the 7 September consultation deadline as the main window to push back.
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