Council urges Minister to ease slurry prohibition

"It would be much better if the scheme was handled by the local authority at local level", said Councillor Des Boylan at the December meeting of Cavan County Council in a further debate on the slurry spreading restrictions. Councillor Boylan said that both he and the chairman of the council, Sean McKiernan, met with Minister for Environment, Phil Hogan, at a recent Fine Gael party meeting and put the case strongly to him that slurry spreading restrictions for County Cavan should be eased taking account of weather conditions at a particular time. They asked the minister to move the period of prohibition for Cavan farmers back to the beginning of January and suggested to him that decisions on slurry spreading should be left with officers of the County Council who could assess the situation on the ground rather than the present system whereby slurry spreading was prohibited even though the weather might be suitable for doing so. See this week's Celt for more...