Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

EU Scrutiny Report and Future Priorities and Challenges: Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government

10:55 am

Mr. John McCarthy:

The legislation to give effect to the RPII and EPA merger, subject to being approved by the Government, should be published quickly after Easter. We hope that it will proceed through both Houses before the summer recess, with the formal merger to follow on after that. A great amount of the preparatory work at an administrative level, led by Mr. Walsh here and colleagues within both organisations, has already been done to facilitate that.

The heads of the climate action and low carbon development Bill are before the Government at the moment. As soon as it has approved them, we will move on to publication very quickly thereafter.