Dr. Fred Logue:

It is not clear conceptually. If a variation is required by national policy it is not a minor amendment. The question I ask when I read the legislation is why a screening is being inserted for something that is not a minor amendment. The legislation does not reflect EU law. The other issue is that SEA is where EIA was ten or 15 years ago. There has not been much focus on it but that is changing. We do not have the lessons from a raft of litigation and enforcement against Ireland about how to properly carry out SEAs. The risk is that if we do not take a conservative approach to how it is implemented in the Bill, we might find out the answers to some of those fundamental questions the hard way. For example, a case has been referred to Europe from the Supreme Court on the basic question of how strategic alternatives should be assessed under the SEA directive. If the question is answered in the way the applicant wants it to be answered, it will mean we have not carried out a single SEA properly in Ireland in the past 19 years since it came in. A conservative approach should be taken. It is a mistake to take shortcuts to try to get around public participation at the plan level. If the intention is to have the debate and have everything worked out at the plan stage, we should err on the side of enabling public participation and not try to close it down in such ways as these expedited variation procedures.