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

It is important to be clear that simply saying that it does not require an AA or EIA, which bear in mind decides if a development impacts on a strategic area of particular natural value, is not enough. The key point was that the compliance committee informed the Government that this was not sufficient because the test is: does it have a potential substantial environmental impact or effect? It is not simply a matter of whether it requires an EIA or AA. A number of other factors influence whether a development has a substantial environmental effect, including all of those other pieces around compliance such as the directives the Minister of State referred to. That is why in our amendments we list some of those in a non-exhaustive way. The Minister of State talked about the assessment directive and asked whether it required an assessment, but he did not talk the about birds directive, the habitats directive or the water framework directive. We have not talked about whether public participation is needed when there is a potential substantial environmental impact. He just went to where there is a particular type of assessment deemed to be required. That is covered in Chapter 5, Part 4 of the original Act. This is the exact proposed fix the Government put to the compliance committee. It was told that it would not. It is still the fix being used. The Government can push it through, but it is not compliant. If the Minister of State says that it is compliant with the Aarhus Convention, can he provide anything from the compliance committee confirming this, besides just stating it? The only evidence we have had from them is that it is not compliant. We have not had any opinion from them to indicate that the problems have been fixed.

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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