Swim NI

History

From 2014-2020, Swim NI was formerly known as EU Swim – a cross-border research programme aimed at developing a live bathing water quality prediction system for six beaches in Northern Ireland and three in the Republic of Ireland (Enniscrone, Lady’s Bay, and Clogherhead).

The project was funded by the EU’s INTERREG VA programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), and match-funded by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland (DAERA), and the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government in Ireland. Total investment amounted to €1,048,966.90.

The previous lead partner in the project was University College Dublin (UCD), supported by Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) and Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful. Upon its completion in December 2020, UCD transferred all six NI-based bathing water quality prediction models to AFBI, who continued to refine the models by gathering environmental water samples over the 2021 bathing season. Since September 2019, DAERA has approved funding for a new EU Swim legacy project, Water Quality Prediction Models Impact DAERA Schemes (WQPMIDS), that would retain AFBI as research partner and Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful as communications partner. 

On 01 June 2022, Swim NI launched to coincide with the beginning of the bathing season. The original predictive aim of the project remains intact and all Northern Ireland beach locations are unchanged.

Swim NI was operations from 2022-2025, at which point the project came to a close.