To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs following the recent incident on Millisle beach, whether sufficient staffing resources and procedures are in place within his Department to deal with diesel spills.

Diesel and other fuel oil spills can and do occur at any time and from a wide range of locations ranging from domestic properties, garage forecourts, road traffic accidents to spills from large commercial properties and from vessels at sea. In 2020, NIEA staff responded to 149 confirmed water pollution incidents involving the spillage of a variety of oil types. The level of Departmental intervention and response depends upon the volume of oil spilled, the type of product involved, the location and the potential environmental impact.

All oil spills are investigated under the Water (NI) Order 1999 and staff are trained and conduct exercises on the deployment of pollution counter-measures and to manage incidents until fully resolved. Formal external training, by professionally accredited providers, has also been provided for a number of key staff to full Maritime and Coastguard Agency Oil Spill Response Executive Commander Level for large marine spills.

Staffing is a finite resource and the ability to respond to any incident outside of normal working hours is reduced and this may in some cases impact upon the speed of response depending upon commitments to other incidents ongoing at the same time.

The Northern Ireland Coastal Contingency plan sets out a tiered approach which identifies the appropriate response capability in terms of expertise and resources for coastal incidents of different magnitudes and complexity. Whilst the Department has the capability to deal with the vast majority of oil spills reported, it is not resourced in terms of staff and equipment to ‘clean up’ particularly large or complex spills. In this regard NIEA will investigate and manage the incident but where necessary, specialist accredited contractors may need to be engaged.

The costs associated with large spills can be substantial and where the source of the oil is known to investigatory staff, the individual or organisation believed to be responsible would be asked to engage a ‘clean up’ contractor in line with the polluter pay’ principle. In all cases the first response of NIEA is to prevent the worsening of the situation and the Department will engage an appropriate contractor and bear the costs if a polluter is not found.