Ms Alison Hough:

Given that competence for the environment has been devolved, it would be done by the Northern Ireland Assembly which, of course, is not operational, but that is where it would have to occur, unless there was an overreaching from the United Kingdom to establish it. That is if we have a dedicated Northern Ireland regulator, but there are alternative models. The UK Government recently proposed an office of environmental protection for England that might be extended to the cover the entire United Kingdom. It could potentially have a role in regulation in Northern Ireland, but it would involve centralising competence from Stormont, which might or might not be acceptable. Given the issues in safeguarding devolved competencies, it looks like that it would have to be an Assembly creation involving legislation at Stormont, unless there was to be a UK regulator.