Ms Maria Graham:

I thank the committee for the invitation to continue discussion on the planning review. I am joined by Ms Mary Jones, Mr. Eugene Waters and Mr. Colin Ryan. We will move to discussion paper 5 on environmental assessment, having already covered papers 1 to 4 in our previous two sessions, which related to plans and guidelines, consents, enforcement and planning bodies. Yesterday afternoon we met with the planning advisory forum to consider the same discussion paper. In addition to the standing members of the group, further representatives from the environmental NGOs, the renewable energy sector and colleagues from the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications attended the meeting to discuss this important topic.

It should be noted that this discussion paper discusses the technical process for environmental assessment as it relates to planning. Other issues concerning access to justice will be dealt with in a further discussion paper on the judicial review process. It is our intention to prepare a paper on this topic in the autumn which we will discuss with the committee.

Environmental assessment is defined by the European Commission as the procedure that ensures that the environmental implications of decisions, including those related to planning, are taken into account before the decisions are made. Three key directives are the driving force behind this process; the environmental impact assessment, EIA, directive, the strategic environmental assessment, SEA, directive and the habitats directive. The common principle of these three directives is to ensure that plans, programmes and projects likely to have significant effects on the environment are made subject to an environmental assessment, prior to their approval or authorisation. Consultation with the public is a key feature of environmental assessment procedures. In Ireland, the aims of environmental assessment are achieved using three key tools; strategic environmental assessment, SEA, environmental Impact assessment, EIA, and appropriate assessment, AA, pursuant to the habitats directive.

With this in mind, the challenge for the review working group, at its broadest level, is to balance our alignment with the European directives with robustly interrogating the current processes to identify any potential for increased clarity and streamlining and maintaining the appropriate levels of public participation and the ability of the system to make robust decisions in a timely and predictable manner.

The first theme of the considerations emerging from the review is clarity. As mentioned at our first discussion, much has changed in the landscape of the planning system in the two decades since the Planning and Development Act 2000 was passed. Not least among these changes is the emergence in importance, rightly, in the interaction between environmental assessment and the plan-making and project-consent processes. It is our view that there is a need to integrate more clearly the scope and role of environmental assessments into plan-making functions, especially the consenting process for projects. The question therefore arises, as is posed in the paper, of whether there is scope to further improve the carrying out, concurrently, of the various assessments of environmental reports for development proposals in order to reduce complexity in the decision-making process, while maintaining the robustness of the final decision.

The second theme is that of alignment. Any changes in timelines need to be in line with the relevant EU directives, without being made unnecessarily complex by overly-intricate national provisions. The planning system and the legislation that underpins it need to be agile enough to deal with the intersection of the various interdependent directives, such as the water framework directive framework directive, the floods directive and the Seveso directive. Planning legislation should reflect the wording and intent of relevant EU environmental directives. The AA process, especially AA in enforcement cases and imperative reasons of overriding public interest, IROPI, processes, needs to be reviewed to better reflect the intent of the habitats directive. We therefore need to consider what steps can be taken to enhance alignment between environmental provisions and wider planning and development policies, while better meeting the objectives of European directives.

The third theme is around future-proofing. The emergence at short notice of impactful policy changes, such as the EU Commission’s REPowerEU statement on moving to independence from Russian fossil fuels, demonstrates the need for agility within the framework of the new Act. The new Act needs to be structured to facilitate such new measures in a manner that dovetails with the system, rather than as processes that bookend a stand-alone planning process.

Environmental assessment and its implications have never been so important. It is imperative that we enable the planning system, through the review, to be equipped with the correct tools to effectively implement new European policy initiatives, especially in the area of renewable energy and supporting infrastructure. This needs to happen in a streamlined manner, rather than ad hoc, in reaction to emerging policies. Therefore, environmental assessment and its related considerations must be integrated into the planning system, in order to enable agility within the system to successfully meet future challenges.