Mr. Philip Nugent:

I thank the Deputy. He characterised it really well and laid it out very clearly. Essentially, there is no way for the State to remove the requirement that operators regularise their past unauthorised development. This is the substitute consent requirement. Substitute consent is how it has been dealt with through Irish legislation. This is something that is derived directly from the environmental impact assessment, EIA, directive and was very clearly addressed in the judgment of the High Court in 2019. That is why we I keep coming back to this point. The route to reactivating peat extraction is through the exiting dual consent process, which provides for the regularisation of past activities and then the authorisation of the prospective activity or the prospective development under both the planning and licensing systems. It is not, therefore, through a policy choice on the Department's part or through the introduction of a ban or a restriction. It is because of a requirement, which is common to almost all types of development, to have the consents in place.

I should also say that the dual consent aspect that applies to industrial heat extraction is not unique. More than 800 Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, licences are held by operators across all sections of the economy and with all those 800 plus licences there would also be a planning permission associated. There are, therefore, 800 licences issued by the EPA that also have planning permission attached. In other words, they have been subject to the dual consent regime and those operators have successfully navigated that system. We do not, therefore, accept that the dual consent regime is uniquely onerous. Industrial peat extraction is a significant intervention in the landscape and it is right and appropriate that there should be a reasonably proportionate bar for authorising that activity. The dual consent regime is not, therefore, unique and, as the Deputy said, it is not open to the State to walk away from its obligations under the EIA directive.