Officials from the Departments of the Environment and Agriculture will be travelling to Brussels later this week in an attempt to formalise Ireland's amended Nitrate Action Plan with the EU.
Irish farmers have been unhappy with the EU nitrates directive, which imposes strict restrictions, in order to protect groundwater quality, on how much fertiliser farmers are allowed to use.
The farm lobby has successfully opposed the introduction of a nitrates plan for Ireland for over a decade, but the issue came to a head last year when the State was threatened with heavy fines unless the directive was introduced.
The first plan sent from Ireland last year was rejected by the European Commission, and over the past year attempts have been made to find an acceptable document that would meet the needs of both farmers and the environment.
Although the majority of Irish farms met the requirement that no more than 170kg of fertiliser be spread on each hectare of farmland annually, about 10,000 more intensive farmers and pig and poultry farmers faced difficulties.
The drawing up of the plan led to a major row between the Irish Farmers Association and Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, which led to the IFA withdrawing its support from Teagasc events.
While this was resolved, the IFA also withdrew from the social partnership talks because of the manner in which the plan was being implemented by the Department of Agriculture. This has yet to be resolved.
Last week, an amended plan was sent to Brussels and "received without comment" by the EU, which has been steadily growing more impatient with Ireland's failure to implement the directive.
This plan contains a number of amendments that will ease some of the difficulties faced by pig and poultry farmers, who normally have to give their farm slurry to other farmers to spread.
It also eased the requirement on farmers already in the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (Reps) that they would have to revise their Reps plan to reflect higher or lower application rates.
Farmers are pinning their hopes that Ireland will be able to negotiate a derogation from the 170kg per hectare specified in the EU directive, to a limit of 250kg per hectare, if the amended Irish plan submitted last week is accepted.