Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

To put this piece to bed, I ask the witnesses to engage with other Departments on the issue and see what can be learned. I will organise for parliamentary questions to be tabled for reply by the Department in the coming days. In fact, I have draft parliamentary questions prepared and will send them on to a Member of the Dáil. We need to get the answers to those questions. There is a lot to be learned.

I received legal advice in respect of section 250, which provides for changes to the rules on costs. That advice states that section 250(1) would provide that the default position in environmental judicial review proceedings would be that the court could make no order as to costs but costs could be awarded against an applicant for proceedings that are frivolous or vexatious or constitute an abuse of process. The key point in the advice is that the draft Bill would give no power to the courts to award costs to a successful applicant and this conflicts with the general rule put in place by the Oireachtas in section 169 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 that costs follow the event and a winning party is granted costs. What is the response of the witnesses to that advice?