Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

8 o’clock

Deputy Ryan's point about the Aarhus Convention is well made, and it would be important to check the legal elements of all of this. This also brings me back to the point I made when I spoke earlier about what "substantial" means. The Minister is describing something that is nearly complete, but I think the description of something as "substantial" is open to interpretation. My concerns are that what a local authority might consider to be substantial might not be the same as what Deputy Murphy, as the Minister, might consider to be substantial, that the understanding of what is substantial might vary from local authority to local authority and that there might be situations in which there was no requirement for an EIA at the start but very little work has been done. The definition of "substantial" comes back into consideration under this amendment.

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