Ireland "continues to play catch-up" on its environmental goals, a new report has warned.
The Environmental Protection Agency's 2024 State of the Environment Report says while the country's reliance on landfills has reduced dramatically we are generating and exporting too much waste.
"We have made progress in improving air quality in our cities, but we have increasing evidence that even low levels of air pollution impacts our health," the report says.
"While we have addressed serious pollution in many rivers and lakes, we are not making progress on the more widespread water pollution from too much nutrient."
The environmental report says Ireland has merely aimed to "get by" for too long, aspiring to "only minimum standards", and then in many instances not even meeting those.
The report says actions on multiple fronts to address issues are not keeping pace with growing pressures and our environment continues to degrade.
It says a 'strategic leap' is now needed for how we will adapt our lives.
'Immense progress'
EPA Director-General Laura Burke says membership of the European Union has helped us a lot.
"We have made immense progress as a nation. Our membership of the EU helped us achieve that," she said.
"We now look back to a time when we had serious industrial pollution of our rivers, when we relied on over a hundred municipal dumps, when we burned smoky fuel in our cities – and we can never go back to that.
"But where we are right now, while it is better, is nowhere near good enough. We are always playing catch-up.
"We now have virtually no seriously polluted rivers but we have hardly any pristine ones left, either."
'Fundamental shift'
Ms Burke said the positive environmental actions we take are not keeping up with growing pressures.
"We now recycle more, but produce more waste than ever and export much of it," she said.
"We are taking positive actions across multiple fronts, but they are not keeping pace with the growing pressures and our environment is being squeezed.
"Increments now are not best use of scarce time and resources: we need to make a fundamental shift," she added.
The report identifies five key areas for change including a national policy position on the environment, rigorous implementation of existing environmental plans and transforming our energy, transport, food and industrial sectors.
It is also calling for a "scale up" of investment in water, energy, transport and waste management infrastructure.
