Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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The Minister of State is very welcome. The work the committee is collectively undertaking is very important as part of the wider function of these Houses. I note the Minister of State stated "strong advice was received that the new process should not in any way hinder the completion of regulations to transpose these directives, as failure to do so on time can inevitably lead to the opening of infringement proceedings". To be clear, it is obviously no one's intention to delay transposition. I note that the power to transpose directives through statutory instrument is a power given to the Government by the Oireachtas through the European Communities Act 1972. It is not a divine right of the Government to make secondary legislation. Any attempts by the Government to bypass or dilute the role of a committee would be inappropriate.

On the point regarding infringement proceedings, while the Minister of State quoted figures from the Single Market scoreboard, we need to be very clear that the scoreboard only examines compliance with EU directives concerning the Single Market and not other vitally important areas, such as the environment. In the past number of days, the Court of Justice of the European Union, CJEU, issued a substantial ruling regarding Ireland's failure to adequately implement the habitats directive, which will result in fines. The judgment found that Ireland had breached the directive by failing to designate 217 of 423 sites in the Atlantic biogeographical region, identified by the European Commission as special areas of conservation, within at least six years of the law coming into force. The designation of special areas of conservation is something that under Irish law is implemented through statutory instrument under section 3 of the European Communities Act.

In January this year, the Commission referred Ireland to the CJEU for failing to correctly transpose the EU water framework directive into national law, for inadequate prevention and management of invasive alien species and failure to adequately reduce air pollutants, notably, ammonia emissions arising from agriculture. In 2017, the Commission sought infringement proceedings for failing to properly transpose the environmental impact assessments directive. It is very unfortunate that in a revision to the Minister of State's opening statement that he circulated to members ten minutes before the start of our private session, he added a paragraph to argue against scrutiny of the statutory instruments designating special areas of conservation.