Conference Chairperson & Opening Remarks
Industrial Emissions Compliance in 2026: What Licensed Operators Need to Be Ready For
- The current compliance environment for IE, IPC and waste-licensed sites
- What the EPA’s 2026–2029 inspection approach means in practice
- Where licensed operators are coming under greatest scrutiny
- Common compliance weaknesses across site operations
- Why environmental compliance now needs stronger operational ownership
Enforcement Trends, Priority Risks and Lessons from Licensed Sites
Speaker: Síofra Heffernan, Associate, A&L Goodbody LLP
- What current enforcement activity is telling operators
- How priority risks are identified and escalated
- Recurring issues that continue to drive EPA attention
- What site teams can learn from enforcement trends and inspection outcomes
- Practical lessons for reducing exposure before issues become formal action
Site Inspections, Unannounced Visits and Being Audit-Ready Every Day
Speaker: Dr Fergal Callaghan, Director, Environment, Health and Safety (EHS), AWN Consulting
- What inspectors typically want to see on site
- Preparing staff, records and site systems for unannounced inspections
- Avoiding gaps between procedures and actual site practice
- Managing site visits, follow-up actions and responses
- Lessons from inspection trends across licensed sites
Emissions Monitoring, Sampling and Evidence You Can Stand Over
Speaker: Dr Fergal Callaghan, Director, Environment, Health and Safety (EHS), AWN Consulting
- Monitoring obligations under licence conditions
- Building confidence in sampling, testing and data quality
- Common mistakes in emissions monitoring and reporting
- Using guidance and standards to strengthen defensibility
- Turning monitoring into something more useful than a box-ticking exercise
Incident Response, Non-Compliance and Escalation Management on Site
- What happens when a site incident becomes a compliance issue
- Responding to exceedances, failures and unexpected events
- Internal escalation, decision-making and containment
- Recording incidents properly and managing communications
- Strengthening preparedness before the next problem lands
Environmental Reporting, Annual Returns and Getting the Basics Right
- Reporting obligations that regularly create problems for operators
- Annual Environmental Reports, routine returns and record discipline
- Improving the quality and consistency of data submitted to the EPA
- Where reporting failures create wider compliance exposure
- Practical steps to reduce errors, omissions and late submissions
Site Operations, Storage Controls and Preventing Pollution Before It Starts
Speaker: Peter Hassett, BEng, MSc, CEng MIEI, Environment Lead, AECOM
- Operational controls that matter most on licensed sites
- Storage and movement of potentially polluting substances
- Housekeeping, containment and maintenance from a compliance perspective
- Aligning environmental controls with actual site operations
- Reducing routine failures that become repeat findings
The Cost of Non-Compliance: Liability, Reputation and Commercial Risk
Speaker: Michelle O'Donnell, MOD Consulting
- How failure to maintain compliance can trigger liability under the Environmental Liability Directive reinforcing the ‘’polluter pays’’ principle and driving remediation costs
- How breaches of the Do No Significant harm principle are increasing scrutiny on environmental performance and decision making
- How operational failures can escalate into enforcement action, prosecution and long-term environmental liability
- The knock-on impact of non-compliance on disclosures under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and wider regulatory obligations
- How environmental incidents can lead to reputational damage, investor scrutiny, loss of stakeholder confidence and loss of contracts across CSRD driven value chains.
- How poor environmental performance can affect contracts, supplier approval and commercial relationships across the value chain
