Gormley says fines
- on EU environment violations likely
By - Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs
Editor.
IRELAND FACES the possibility of being fined by the
European courts for violations of EU environmental law,
according to the Minister for the Environment.
John Gormley was speaking at a meeting of the Irish
Environmental Lawyers' Association yesterday on the role
of the EU in developing Irish environmental law.
While Ireland had some advanced environmental law for the
time before joining the EU, European directives had since
formed the backbone of current Irish environmental law,
he said.
"Sometimes the system has been slow in implementing the
new, more rigorous approach required and we have to
acknowledge that Ireland has, in the past, been weak in
certain areas of enforcement and implementation".
"Because of that, we have found ourselves at the end of
negative judgments from the European Court of
Justice".
He said that we continued to have a number of open
environmental infringement cases at various stages in
proceedings. "Some of those are very serious cases that
have been on the books for years, too many years. In a
number of cases, we face the very real possibility of
fines being imposed by the European courts".
"Ireland hasn't managed in the past to address all the
matters arising, but I am working extremely hard to
resolve these legacy issues", he said.
In particular, he said, he was now looking at the
transposition into Irish law of two directives, dealing
respectively with public participation in environmental
decisions and environmental liability.
The Aarhus Convention seeks to ensure that citizens and
their representatives can play a full and active role in
maintaining and enhancing the environment, with access to
environmental information, public participation and
access to justice.
Environmental information was already provided for in the
Access to Information on the Environment Regulations,
which came into force in last May. He said he was now
working on the other measures that would allow us to
ratify the Aarhus Convention.
The Environmental Liability Directive gave real form and
substance to the "polluter pays" principle, and Mr.
Gormley said his department was working on its
transposition. It envisages a clear role for citizens and
organisations to take action in relation to instances of
environmental damage and the transposing legislation
would reflect that. He said the draft instrument would be
available for public consultation in the near future.
© The Irish Times, 2nd. April 2008.
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