Compliance and Performance Reporting by Licensees 

This page outlines the obligations under your licence to maintain records of your emissions, waste management and any impacts on your local environment, and the obligations to submit reports of this monitoring to the EPA.  

Maintenance of Records 

The operator of a licensed activity is responsible for maintaining the records required under their licence on: 

  • Environmental management 
    • personnel and procedures 
    • operation of physical infrastructure 
    • staff training  
    • accident preparedness  
    • financial provision for incident and closure preparedness,  
    • limiting and preventing emissions to surface waters, groundwaters and the atmosphere 
  • minimising and managing waste 
  • maintaining monitoring and performance records 
    • monitoring of emissions to air and water 
    • monitoring of impacts: noise, odour, dust 
    • sampling, monitoring and analytical methods 
    • complaints received and incidents or non-compliant emissions that occur 

You are required to maintain these records in secure systems for inspection by authorised EPA inspectors. They should be maintained for a minimum period of seven years. The records that relate to site infrastructure, areas of historic or current contamination or where waste materials are or were placed should be maintained indefinitely for later reference. 

Your records are the basis for your compliance reporting to the EPA. 

Operational Monitoring 

The details vary according to your Activity Sector and the nature of the site’s operations, but licences typically require monitoring and recording of 

  • emissions to water or sewer 
  • emissions to air 
  • periodic inspection of site drainage and other onsite systems 
  • periodic survey of offsite odour, noise, dust 

Your monitoring activities should be conducted in accordance with the specifications set out in your licence and the monitoring guidance issued by the EPA.  Please ensure that you have access to and are using the current version of each guidance document. 

Reports of your monitoring programmes must be submitted to the EPA as Licensee Returns via your EDEN Portal.  Your reports must be submitted according to the timescales and frequencies set out in your licence, or as otherwise agreed with the EPA where your licence provides for this. 

Annual performance reporting: AER and EPR 

Licensees are obliged to submit annual summary reports of your facility’s environmental performance.  

In the past, the annual report from licensees was a single, detailed document, but in recent years we have separated this single report into two separate components. We made this change to eliminate instances where licensees were asked to report similar information to the EPA more than once, and to make the reports easier for the public to use.  

The two components are 

  1. An Annual Environmental Report (AER) 
  2. An Environmental Performance Report (EPR) 

All Licensees are required to submit your AER and EPR returns by 31 March of the year following the year being reported on. 

Learn more 

Search for AERs and other reports from and about licensed, permitted or authorised sites 

  • AERs submitted by licensees are available, along with other key enforcement documents, on the “View Enforcement Documents” Tab of the Licence Details Page for each licence. 

See Ireland’s Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) 

View our national statistics on waste collection, transfer and recovery or disposal.