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The Irish Times has reported that the Minister for
the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley
TD is to bring measures to Cabinet to deal with a defect in
legislation - because of which, developers have been allowed
to carry out environmental impact assessments after construction
work has begun on projects.
The move follows the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling
against Ireland in a case involving the Derrybrien windfarm
project in Co Galway, where a landslide killed 50,000 fish
in 2003. The landslide also dislodged 450,000 cubic metres
of peat over a 32km area, polluting a local river.
The ECJ said that a full and adequate environmental impact
assessment should have been carried out before the project
proceeded, but the Government had claimed the landslide was
caused by poor construction work. The court ruled that retention
permission can be applied only in exceptional circumstances
and argued, in effect, that the application of Irish law was
not sufficiently robust.
While Minister Gormley's action follows the ECJ ruling, his
spokesman said that the issue - "was a lacuna
which the Minister himself had identified on entering into
office". The spokesman added that the Minister had asked
his officials last autumn to bring forward measures to deal
with the problem. He said that these measures, which would
essentially ban 'retrospective' approval of an environmental
impact assessment, would be brought to Government in the near
future.
The ECJ ruling also affects a range of cases where the required
environmental impact assessment was carried out after work
began. The projects affected include quarry developments in
Offaly, pig-rearing, peat-extraction and wood-processing businesses,
as well as more traditional construction schemes.
The Government defended the case taken by the European Commission,
which blamed Ireland's failure to properly implement a 1985
European directive laying out rules to follow on planning
applications and environmental impact assessments for projects.
The Government told the European Court of Justice in February
that weak planning rules were not to blame for the landslide
at Derrybrien, Co Galway, which caused the environmental disaster.
Source - The Irish Times
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