Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Those are very weak arguments. With respect to climate change, I welcome the provision depending on the outcome of the Minister's deliberations. We are in significant non-compliance with a number of very important EU environmental directives. We have until 16 May to transpose the 2014 EIA directive and unless the Minister is telling us today that it will happen, we will have a difficulty there.

We are not in compliance with the urban wastewater directive so badly that after five years of enforcement proceedings by the European Commission, we are facing action by the European Court of Justice. One of the bizarre things about the debate on the Water Framework Directive is that there is a series of areas of that directive in which we are not in compliance. We are late in producing our second river basin management plan. I am not sure if work in the Department on the water extraction registration regime has actually taken place. The track record of compliance on just those three directives makes a compelling argument for making Deputy Eamon Ryan's amendment. In terms of his concern that by naming them, we will have a difficulty with future directives or changes to existing ones, the Minister's own argument undermines it. It is technically covered by the inclusion of relevant EU Acts. To be doubly sure, there is no reason the Minister could not make his own amendment to Deputy Eamon Ryan's amendment on Report Stage to give him the power to add future directives or changes to existing directives by way of regulations. That would absolve him from the difficulty of having to bring forward legislation.