Dr. ?ine Ryall:

I will start by saying I am very pleased to hear the committee is planning to have a separate session on the enforcement of existing environmental law. That is hugely important, as it is that the committee hears from a wide range of people involved in day-to-day enforcement activity. As regards the reasons we have comprehensively failed, as the assembly put it, there are many reasons. I will highlight a few. First it is a lack of prioritisation. It comes back to the first point I made. We have to prioritise enforcement and full implementation of our existing laws. That ties in very much with having a coherent approach. My perspective, having been involved in this area for nearly 20 years now, is that we have a very fragmented approach to environmental governance. That coherence is missing. I am sure the committee has heard this from other witnesses and indeed from the chair of the citizens' assembly herself. That fragmentation is so damaging.

We have also failed spectacularly to resource our public authorities. Again, that is a well-known fact but it is something we cannot get away from. Enforcement is a resource-intensive activity. It is important to link enforcement in with promoting compliance. In an ideal world, we would prefer not have to do a lot of enforcing, if people saw it as being worthwhile to comply with the law in the first place. It is important to use that compliance perspective in addition to the enforcement challenge. On compliance, it is important that people are made more aware of what their legal obligations are as regards nature protection. There is a public education role there and a need for the strong message to go out about ongoing enforcement activities which, to be fair, have been ramped up significantly in recent times. I refer also to the resources that are now being pumped in to the National Parks and Wildlife Service. These are all very positive signs but they cannot be taken for granted. To conclude, I would say compliance goes hand in hand with enforcement. I have to say again that access to justice is key. At the end of the day - we hope it would not be the case but we see clearly that it is - if the law is not being enforced, somebody, whether an individual, NGO or public authority, must be in a position to go to court. The law is not optional. We are just making a joke of our laws if they are not being enforced.