OverviewIreland's Nitrates Action Programme (NAP) regulates how farmers manage fertiliser and manure to protect water quality — but it evaluates itself almost entirely on nitrate concentrations, not on the people the policy actually touches. This dissertation asks whether Ireland's Well-being Framework, a broader lens covering environment, health, income and community, can close that gap.

Headline finding: The NAP is failing on its own terms — nitrate levels are still rising in the areas of greatest concern — and it has no mechanism at all for tracking the stress, debt, and exclusion that farmers and rural communities describe living with under it.