Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-25
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Timmy Dooley (FF), Clare

I understand where the Senator is coming from on this. The Senator and I would know certainly know this from a planning perspective through our time in this House and the other House. We are very familiar with the exacting timelines that exist from a planning perspective and they work well. The concern we have on this one is that if we have a very rigorous timeline, it may bring about a refusal at a point in time just to meet a deadline because all the information is not available to the agency in the first instance. Heretofore, in the provision of that information in the first instance, applicants have been used to a more iterative process. It happens with other licensing. I am dealing with it in relation to aquaculture on the other side of my brief. It is about trying to bring everybody on a journey to get a result in as timely a manner as possible.
Sometimes applicants are not in position to provide information because historically that was not the case. Based on my understanding of conversations with the EPA, the effort here is about having the flexibility so that it is not forced to refuse on a Friday because it has reached that hard deadline, thereby forcing the applicant to go back through that statutory process again, as happens with planning. Sometimes on some of the larger scale projects where a lot of information is required, an applicant reaches that deadline including extension of time for further information and the local authority is left with no choice but to refuse or the applicant must withdraw the application and start over again. We are trying to avoid that in this instance. Of course, if it is not working further down the road, we can look at the statutory instrument element of it. It is about creating that flexibility rather than providing an excuse to an agency not to get something done. Because of its length of time in existence and its establishment, the EPA's track record is good. We are trying to make it better in terms of the effectiveness of the delivery of the licence.
On the other hand, with the capacity to provide licence extensions where a relatively small amount of activity needs to change, the legislation now provides a critical path to getting that done much more quickly. Rather than reviewing the entirety of the licence, it is only the piece that might be changing. Therefore, there is flexibility there. I understand where the Senator is coming from in drawing those parallels which are relevant. When starting from the position that we are, this seems to be based on the interaction between the parent Department and the EPA. I am conscious that it is a subset of the Department and there is a closer connection there than with the planning Act which covers the local authorities but they also have additional statutory functions. We believe there is a greater capacity to deliver on that. I am confident that we have the appropriate provisions in place here. Unfortunately, I cannot accept the amendment but I understand what the Senator is seeking to achieve. I believe we have it covered already and time will tell how that works out. I again thank the Senator for his contribution.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-25