Draft Ammonia Strategy for Northern Ireland Consultation

The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) is delighted to present this Consultation on the draft Ammonia Strategy for Northern Ireland and looks forward to hearing your views.

This draft strategy was developed under the leadership of the former DAERA Minister and it will help us plan the way forward to reduce ammonia emissions from agriculture. In DAERA, we recognise that we do not have all the answers and this consultation will help us strengthen the draft strategy with your help.

We welcome your views and we have posed questions throughout the draft strategy. We are keen to have as many responses as possible to these questions and any other practical and affordable ideas or suggestions. There is more information on page 6 about how to take part in the consultation and your responses will be used to inform a reworked draft Ammonia Strategy for an incoming Minister and new Executive to consider.

We are also developing a Call for Evidence to inform a new operational protocol to assess the impacts of air pollution on the natural environment and we aim to publish this separately in 2023.

Details of stakeholder engagement events

DAERA have hosted five public information meetings at the Greenmount, Enniskillen and Loughry Campuses to outline the content of the recently released DAERA Draft Ammonia Strategy. Details can be found in the document above:

• Ammonia strategy consultation presentation

Existing resources

A series of three online seminars on ammonia with leading experts, organised by DAERA in September 2020, are still available for you to view at Ammonia emissions in Northern Ireland | daera-ni.gov.uk.

These seminars outline:

• The science behind ammonia.
• The ecological impact of ammonia emissions on habitats.
• Inclusion of specific Northern Ireland data in the UK ammonia inventory.
• The potential for ammonia reduction in Northern Ireland, including associated economic analysis and scenario modelling.
• Case studies on ammonia reduction at individual farm level.
• Ammonia measurement at regional, farm and habitat level in Northern Ireland.

Reports presenting the outcomes of ongoing monitoring at eight Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) are available at: Effects of air pollution on natural ecosystems: science and evidence publications | daera-ni.gov.uk.

The report on atmospheric ammonia assessments on six designated sites in Northern Ireland. (Year 1: June 2020 – May 2021) is available at https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/533585/1/N533585CR.pdf

The publication on the MACC data - The Cost of Reducing Ammonia from Agriculture: Farm-gate Estimates and Policy Considerations is available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1746-692X.12331

Articles on Monitoring Atmospheric Ammonia at Hillsborough, the AFBI Hillsborough Ammonia Monitoring Blog, Ammonia Emission Sources and Impacts, High Resolution Ammonia Monitoring at AFBI Hillsborough and FAQs are available at https://www.afbini.gov.uk/articles/monitoring-atmospheric-ammonia-hillsborough

A report on scenario modelling, testing the potential impact of ammonia (NH₃) mitigation measures on atmospheric emissions, concentrations and deposition on Northern Ireland-wide and spatially targeted options near designated sites can be found through the following link Scenario modelling - spatial targeting of ammonia mitigation measures in Northern Ireland - NERC Open Research Archive

This public consultation is open for a period of 8 weeks until 23:59, 3 March 2023. We encourage you to respond as early as possible. We welcome views from all sectors, age-groups, organisations, and individuals.

We plan to host consultation events where you can obtain more information on the consultation. These will be updated on this page in due course.