Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Senator McGahon’s point on having a lead agency is a good one. I was wondering which body would have primary responsibility.

I want to follow up on two or three words. Mr. Finnegan referred to the idea of tightening the offences. While he said the offences will still be unlawful, I am a little concerned that the tightening of offences might mean excluding certain things that would be considered unlawful now from the new definition of a crime.

I raise again the issue of "serious" or "systematic". I am worried that we are creating new loopholes or defences. For example, with the idea of mens rea, we know that intention is extraordinarily hard to prove in the law. It is almost impossible do so and, in fact, the Government recently introduced legislation on the argument that intention is too hard to prove. In that context, it would be useful to know what Ireland is doing at the Council meetings. Are we being clear around the idea of negligence in the discussion of such matters as “serious” or “systematic”? What is our position in those discussions?

I mentioned the precautionary principle. Serious negligence is one thing but the precautionary principle is a little different. It is an obligation to take appropriate measures and steps. For example, if a company has an incident in Lithuania and then allows another incident to take place in another country, surely at that point it has failed to apply a precautionary principle. I want to get a sense of where the Department stands on these issues.

Mr. Finnegan indicated he may be able to follow up around environmental impact assessments, which will obviously be key to this. If the Department could follow up, it would useful to know what public resources - staffing, financial and other - are available to support environmental impact assessments, how that has changed in the past year or two and what the plan is for the following number of years. It is clear that this is a tool that we will need more and earlier in processes. I am a bit concerned that we might take the approach we have taken in the past, namely, one where we try to apply it in fewer and fewer cases rather than trying to resource it in a better way. If Mr. Finnegan does not have the information to hand, perhaps he will provide some written answers.