Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 9, after line 41, to insert the following:

“Establishment and functions of the Office of Radiological Protection

15. (1) The Agency shall establish within its organisational structure an office to be called the Office of Radiological Protection.

(2) Management and direction of the Office of Radiological Protection, within the organisational structure of the Agency, shall be the responsibility of the person who becomes a director of the Agency under section 14(1).

(3) The Agency shall ensure that all functions transferred to the Agency under section 6(1) shall be administered from and carried out by the Office of Radiological Protection.”.

On Committee Stage I outlined a similar amendment. It is fair to argue that this Bill is facilitating a merger, with the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, RPII, being assimilated into the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, rather than there being two distinct organisations with separate profiles. I made the argument on Committee Stage, and I will continue to make it, that at the very least there should be a guaranteed separate function and office within the EPA. As I stated on Committee Stage, Professor William Reville indicated to the committee some time ago that the function of the EPA is to protect the environment from people, whereas the RPII has a function to protect people from nuclear material and radon gases. These are almost converse functions.

The EPA does good work within the science sphere and it will have an enhanced function from climate legislation, as it will have oversight of how to keep targets to be set in the sectoral plans. The difficulty is the EPA does not have the resources to really enforce some of the areas they have licensed, and there are a couple of bad examples in my constituency which I referred to on Committee Stage. I am concerned that it is quite stretched anyway and this is another so-called elimination of quangos. How organisations are put together and cultures are mixed is a challenge in its own right. This is not a merger and, if it was, it would be the sum of two equal parts, which is not what it will be. The amendment provides for the separation within the EPA and I am interested to hear the Minister of State's comments on the matter.

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