Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

Let us examine what is being proposed here. The Minister has found a formula to get around the judgment of the European Court of Justice and it is that an environmental impact assessment will be required where there is a significant impact on the environment. However, if one examines the criteria for that, one sees that they are wide open.

Deputy Naughten is right. If this was a situation where one was talking about individuals cutting turf with their own sleán on their own bank in their own bog, it would probably be fine. However, that is not what is happening now. These days a machine goes onto a bog and cuts turf for a number of people. By my reckoning, once a machine is cutting for around 20 people, it will be covered by these regulations and the operator will have to submit to an environmental impact assessment. This is why this issue should have been teased out in an Oireachtas committee and not in the last week of the Dáil session. It should have been dealt with long before now. This matter was held over until the last week, if not the last minute, so that the Minister could be in and out in no time and when the turf hits the fan, so to speak, he can blame the Green Party. That is the politics of this.

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