David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations and for the work they are doing in this area. As my colleagues said, we could probably spend the whole day dealing with one area never mind a short period of time dealing with such a vast number of topics. Dr. Walker made an interesting comment in his submission that the imperative reasons of overriding public interest, IROPI, route requires compensatory measures that may be difficult to even conceive of let alone implement, particularly for offshore projects. I looked up what IROPI meant. I did not know, and correct me if I am wrong, but it stated it was imperative reasons of overriding public interest. I have been looking at this and I think Dr. Walker mentioned he was quite scathing of our planning system as well. The Aarhus Convention, strategic environmental assessments, environmental impact assessments, EIAs, and so on all play a part and our common law system comes into it. Will Dr. Walker expand a bit on this for people listening in? As a public representative, I am interested in that kind of point of imperative reasons of overriding public interest.