Under common law liability by way of nuisance and negligence and the more modern environmental\/contamination liability legislation, polluters are liable for damage to persons or property caused by pollution.<\/p>\n
Presumptively, damages are recoverable when sewage effluent and pollutant matter enter waters and cause loss of personal property. The occupier of premises from which the effluent or pollutant matter originated is liable unless a defence applies.<\/p>\n
It may also lie against the person whose act or omission occasioned the entering of polluting matter into the waters where the act or omission constitutes a contravention of the legislation.<\/p>\n
Where trade sewage effluent or other polluting matter enters waters and causes injury, loss or damage to a person or property, the person may recover damages from the occupier of the premises from which the effluent or matter originated without prejudice to any other potential cause of action unless the entry to waters was caused by an act of God or an act or omission by a third party over whose conduct the occupier had no control and which was not reasonably foreseeable by the occupier.<\/p>\n
Liability also arises in relation to an act or omission which was in contravention of the provisions of the Local Government (Water \u2009Pollution) Acts.<\/p>\n
There is a defence where the entry of trade sewage effluent is licensed under a water pollution licence, or the fisheries acts. There is likely to be a defence if the matter was caused by an act of God, omission of a third party over whose conduct such occupier had no control being an act or omissions which such occupier could not reasonably have foreseen or guarded against.<\/p>\n\n
\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fisheries Offences Before the modern water pollution legislation was introduced in the 1970s, there was fishing legislation which protected fishing waters. The release of certain materials and deleterious matter into waters is an offence under the Fisheries Act. Deleterious material is any substance which is injurious or poisonous to fish or their spawning grounds or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19087"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31493,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19087\/revisions\/31493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}