Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-07-15
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

With respect, the fundamental issues highlighted by the compliance committee when it found that Ireland had breached the Aarhus Convention and had not been addressed adequately still stand. Can the Minister of State recognise the concern? He referenced the practices in place but they have been found to be non-compliant. This was also highlighted clearly during the debate on the 2024 Act. The Minister is now taking them and applying them in two new contexts. The measures the Minister of State just referenced are not adequate to meet the obligations on public participation as made clear by Aarhus Convention compliance committee.
Could the Minister of State indicate when and how the Government intends to address this fundamental issue? When the previous planning and development Bill was going through, we were told not to worry, the Attorney General was on it and the Government was going to come up with some fixes that would be produced at the last minute when the Bill was going through in September. They were not fixed. They were not addressed. There is now a cavalier attitude with the Government saying it will do two more kinds of the same thing without fixing or addressing the fundament concerns of the compliance committee. What is the Government's plan to work on compliance?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-07-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-07-15