Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 94:

In page 48, to delete lines 7 to 20.

I am not going to make a big deal out of this but I find this an utterly mad section and I would really like some clarity on it. I am looking just to remove it. What we are talking about here is a scenario in which the competent authority has issued an enforcement notice against a company, meaning they have gone through all the steps, a noise mitigation measure has been suggested, any appeal process has been gone through, all of that is finished and it has been agreed that the work will commence and the suggested measure will be implemented. The organisation against which the order was made has not bothered implementing it so the competent authority has had to issue an enforcement notice. The DAA or an airline has gone all that length of the way. What we are putting in here is a section that gives the offender, the body that has breached the enforcement order, fast-track access to the courts to appeal the enforcement order. This body will never be a local resident, this is about the big players.

I think that is the maddest thing I have ever heard. It is not necessary at all and in fact it is giving life to the appalling vista to which the Minister referred in his previous answer when we were trying to deal with the fines issue. This is giving carte blancheto a big semi-State organisation to use the courts at the taxpayer's expense. As the Minister said earlier, they are not footing the bill on this so we are giving them a specific mandate to breach regulations and go through the whole process, ignore an enforcement order and then go to the courts. They will say to themselves that they are not going to comply with that enforcement order because they can go to the courts and the courts have a laxity in terms of where the costs are going to be. We do not need this provision at all. The Bill gives adequate protection and I cannot understand it.

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