The European Commission has seriously reprimanded the Government, charging it with failing to fulfil its obligations in assessing the effects on the environment of a number of key development projects, it emerged yesterday.
The reprimand from the Commission was sent on August 6th to the Department of the Environment and referred to a number of major Irish developments including the Ballymun housing project in Dublin, a cement factory at Kinnegad, Co Meath, a proposed piggery at Stradbally, Co Waterford and the Kildare bypass.
The Government has two months to reply to the Commission's "reasoned opinion". But a spokesman for the Department of the Environment said last night they had sought an extension to next week's October 6th deadline. "The Department will be replying in full," he said, but declined to comment further.
In Brussels a senior official in the legal department of the EU Environment Commission described the reprimand as essentially "a criticism of the system which prevents the Irish Planning Board from taking any environmental matters into account when it takes its decisions".
It was also a criticism of the way in which the Environmental Protection Agency was unable to deal with planning issues under Irish law - its role is confined to waste/pollution aspects: "Irish legislation does not give us the guarantees the Directive requires in terms of how the EPA looks at the role of environment impact assessments (EIAs), for example."
The Commission charges the Irish authorities with: failure to ensure that environmentally significant projects are EIA-assessed; non-conformity of the transposing legislation in relation to the Directive; lack of proper information and consultation from developers in projects requiring integrated pollution control (IPC) licences; and providing environmental information outside the required time-frame for an EIA.
In the case of the new Ballymun housing project, the Commission said, "complainants contended that the urban development was being carried out in a manner that avoided environmental impact assessment" under the EIA Directive. In particular, it pointed out, "development consent" was sought and obtained from Dublin Corporation - by a subsidiary company owned by the planning authority - for "sections of the overall scheme".
None of these sections exceeded the "urban development threshold" for a mandatory EIA under Irish legislation implementing the directive: "This implementing legislation gives scope to decision-makers to require an EIA below the mandatory threshold, but Dublin Corporation had consistently declined to require an EIA for the sections being put forward."
In the case of three of these sections, appeals had been lodged with An Bord Pleanβla which has power to demand an EIA. It stipulated that an EIA was required.
The Kinnegad and Stradbally cases raised the issue of compliance with the EIA in cases where decision-making was split between the local planning authority and the Environmental Protection Agency. In neither case was the environmental information provided during the EIA properly taken into account. In the Stradbally case the "potential environmental impact" of the proposed pig-rearing installation "radically changed" during the decision-making procedure.
The Kildare bypass "involves constructing a motorway below the level of the surrounding land". This required constant removal of large amounts of water from an aquifer (a natural underground water reservoir) to keep the motorway dry. During the impact assessment stage "Ireland's competent nature conservation authority expressed serious concerns" about the impact of the water removal, fearing it would interfere with natural flows to nearby Pollardsdown Fen, an internationally important wetland.
Despite complaints that the EIA procedures were not followed, the Minister for the Environment confirmed in December 1999 that the project could proceed, said the Commission. It did not propose to "call into question" the bypass project itself.
However, it found the EIA was deficient in terms of the information provided.