Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

MARA can decide if something is sufficiently significant to require an environmental impact assessment, EIA. If it decides that it does not or - if I have the jargon right - it screens something out which should have been in, that is challengeable. How? It is through the courts only through judicial review. There is no method for stakeholders, NGOs or members of the public to challenge a decision as to whether an EIA should have been required for the licensing of a particular activity other than recourse to a judicial review, which is an expensive, difficult and onerous process. With the exception of the rather discredited strategic housing developments, that is different from how we do things on land, where there is an initial process and a right to appeal. The only avenue once the MARA makes the decision that, for example, an environmental impact assessment is not necessary for somebody wishing to challenge that is to apply for a judicial review. That seems-----