Dublinked.iecc-byData covers 2026
· dataset listing last updated 2025-04-16T09:10:59.386994
86% of Irish bathing sites achieved excellent water quality in 2025, with Mayo accounting for 28% of all monitored beaches
Why this matters
This follows the EPA's May 2026 report highlighting that heavy rainfall events became more frequent during the 2025 bathing season, with bathing water warnings nearly doubling. Urban wastewater issues were the most frequently reported cause of bathing water problems, leading to temporary beach closures and restrictions. The data shows which beaches maintained safe swimming conditions and where infrastructure pressures emerged during a challenging season.
86% of monitored bathing sites (43 of 50) achieved the highest 'Excellent Quality' classification in 2025, down from 92% the previous year
Water quality has been consistently strong over the past four years, with 'Excellent Quality' classifications ranging from 90% in 2022 and 2023 to 92% in 2024
Mayo dominates the dataset with 28% of all monitored sites (14 of 50), followed by Galway with 13 sites, suggesting these western counties have particularly extensive coastal and lake bathing areas
46 of the 50 sites (92%) are identified as having short-term pollution risk, indicating most beaches require active management despite their generally excellent long-term water quality ratings
68% of sites (34 of 50) have achieved Blue Flag status, while less than a fifth (9 of 50) have Green Coast accreditation, showing strong amenity provision alongside environmental quality
'Excellent Quality' accounts for 92% of all Year1 Annual Water Quality Classification values (46 of 50).View underlying data
Category
Value
Excellent Quality
46
Good Quality
2
Sufficient Quality
1
Not classified
1
'Excellent Quality' accounts for 90% of all Year2 Annual Water Quality Classification values (45 of 50).View underlying data
Category
Value
Excellent Quality
45
Good Quality
4
Poor Quality
1
'Excellent Quality' accounts for 90% of all Year3 Annual Water Quality Classification values (45 of 50).View underlying data
Category
Value
Excellent Quality
45
Good Quality
4
Poor Quality
1
A caveat worth knowing: This dataset represents only 50 identified bathing locations and excludes any sites that may have been monitored but did not meet the criteria for inclusion, so it cannot tell us about overall national bathing water coverage or sites that may have been removed from monitoring
API endpoint used: https://data.epa.ie/bw/api/v1/locations
Licence: cc-by
Selected automatically — interestingness score 80/100
(has a time dimension, multiple numeric fields, and/or a categorical breakdown;
see the project's scoring method for details).
Published 2026-08-10T10:12:53.528814+00:00.
Generated automatically by Ireland Open Data Analyst — every quantitative claim above
was checked against a computed value before publishing.