The Board of Teagasc, the Irish agriculture and food development authority, is meeting to consider proposals by its scientific staff on the implementation of the EU nitrates directive.
The proposals - which are understood to support a relaxation of the directive's rules on phosphorus and nitrogen limits - have already been criticised the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA).
IFA president Pádraig Walshe said the new recommendations on the levels of fertilisers farmers will be allowed use in future will still severely limit output from Irish farms.
Mr Walshe said he continued to have serious concerns as Teagasc was linking fertiliser limits to precise stocking rates. He said this removed the flexibility that farmers needed in practical farming situations and greatly increased the bureaucracy for farmers and their advisers.
"There is a fundamental difference between recommendations given as advice and statutory upper limits to penalise farmers. This point has been missed up until now," Mr Walshe said.
But a Teagasc spokesman told ireland.comthis afternoon the proposals were well received by the Board. He said a number of clarifications had been sought but he expected the report to be finalised by Teagasc at a meeting on March 1st before being presented to Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan.
The European Union has agreed to defer Ireland's compliance with the nitrates directive because of opposition by farmers to the directive's regulations concerning phosphate levels.
