Dr. ?ine Ryall:

I thank the Senator for that question, which is a very good and challenging one, because they say that all law is politics, to some extent, so there is no getting away from that. The best answer I can give is that it comes back to ensuring there is access to courts so that if the State fails, as the Senator suggested - I am not talking about a specific case - or if somebody identifies a failure on the part of the State, some remedy is available, because if there is no remedy, there is no incentive for the State, the State actors or public authorities to act appropriately, if there is an advantage potentially, politically or otherwise, to not enforcing the law.

My simple answer would be that people need access to justice and an avenue to pursue, which would, unfortunately, be through the courts, unless we could bring political pressure to bear. It comes back to the point I made about the importance of what we call interlocutory remedies, where people can go to court to try to prevent environmental damage from happening in the first place. That is something the committee has to take account of, namely, the accessibility of remedies to hold people to account. This also comes back to the fragmentation we have heard so much about and how different arms of the State have different roles and things can fall between the cracks. It may be easier for certain public authorities to back away from a particular problem without the overarching coherent level of oversight. Again, I will not comment on the specific case mentioned, but there is a lot of work to be done in terms of driving forward the implementation of the existing laws we have.

I refer to Deputy O'Sullivan's excellent questions. People talk about nature not having rights right now. We have a lot of nature protection law and that law needs to be enforced, coming back to Deputy O'Sullivan's points on management plans and conservation measures. A lot of resources are now being pumped into the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, and real progress is being made. There is, of course, a lot more to be done, but it is important to acknowledge that. We also need to recognise the power the habitats directive would have if it were implemented and enforced such as, for example, Article 6.3.

Migratory species and the proposed nature restoration law were mentioned. That is a fundamental element of all of the laws and rights we are discussing. There is our own national nature protection and European Union law, which can be and is very powerful when enforced. Of course, there is the potential added value of some form of constitutional right in taking them all together. That is not to underplay the significance of our existing nature protection laws.