Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support Deputy Clare Daly’s amendments with respect to the deletions. This is extraordinary. To go back to what I said on Second Stage, in his earlier career the Minister would have found it unbelievable that a conflicted body would be appointed as a regulator. The papers released by the Department recently under a freedom of information request and reported in the journal.ieshow that Minister was briefed that many regulated bodies are funded by the regulated entity in the form of a levy or charge on that entity. That is precisely what he would have railed against in the financial sector over the years. We know what happened in the financial sector when a regulator who was a hostage was not able to deliver independent judgments. The Minister is saying there is clarity. The point about this Bill is that it is a total failure. There is no clarity and there is no question that we will return to this legislation to appoint an independent regulator in the next Dáil. The Minister had the opportunity to address this matter and I believe his Department told him that. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, did not have the organisational capacity but one of the functions of the EPA under the European legislation is to be the regulator of noise in this country. This is provided for in legislation introduced in 2006. The EPA asked the four local authorities to work together to prepare an agglomeration of noise maps across our county and city region. That was the job given to the local authorities but, again, people refused to allow the noise map of the airport to be included in that.

We are dealing with a very flawed process. We do not have noise limits in this country. The Minister can search through all the road traffic legislation. He will know this issue comes under a series of Acts covering noise, be it from barking dogs to machinery in factories and right across the area of production of noise. We know what the World Health Organization has codified as desirable low sound levels, namely, under 50 dB at night and under 55 dB in the daytime, with undesirable high sound levels defined as being above 55 dB at night and above 70 dB in daytime. The absolute values the WHO was aiming at were a little lower than that. As I understand it, we have not provided for these thresholds in any legislation.

In a previous Dáil, as the Minister might remember from his time in the Seanad, the former Deputy Ciarán Cuffe of the Green Party brought forward a noise abatement Bill to take account of noise across the board, including aircraft, commercial activity, major events or neighbours playing loud music or practising playing the drums, lead guitar or bass guitar. It was all-encompassing noise legislation, which we still have not enacted. I agreed with colleagues that it would have been better to appoint the Commission for Aviation Regulation, CAR, as the regulator, but we did not do that either.

The last thing the Minister has given us is clarity on this matter. We do not have clarity and we do not know what will happen. The Minister has refused to create some form of reasonable regime, which an independent regulator could operate. It is reminiscent of other legislation in which he has been involved.

A number of Members referred to the famous letter from 2017 which was sent by Fingal County Council's distinguished director of services, Ms AnnMarie Farrelly, in which she stated: "Fingal County Council does not have the requisite competencies available within the Council in areas of aviation operations, noise (including contour mapping) and economic feasibility assessments for the purpose of determining the cost-effectiveness of solutions within the context of the 'Balanced Approach' as set out in the Regulation." That statement could not be clearer. Regardless of whether complaints go to An Board Pleanála or into the courts system, we will regret that we had an opportunity in the Dáil - there is still an opportunity in the Oireachtas - to have a truly independent regulator but the Minister did not take it. He is leaving us with a bit of a mess because he is not prepared to deal with one of the important sources of noise, certainly for the area in question.

I asked the Minister about the noise impact maps the last day. One of the things we know about the airport is that the serious noise impact map is growing across south Fingal, the north of my constituency and north west across to parts of County Meath. That is why so many of us were interested in this Bill in the first place. The basic point is that we wanted to give our constituents some kind of confidence that there is a system in place as the north runway commences operations and as the DAA intends moving from a 30 million passenger cap to 40 million or maybe 50 million - another Gatwick, another hub airport.

Through the years, we have supported the development of the airport in a sustainable way because of the 100,000 jobs in the airport zone, to which the Minister referred on Second Stage. Nonetheless, we need a very clear regime in regard to aircraft noise and airport noise and we need systems of management, such as Deputy Daly outlined, in regard to managing the different cohorts of passengers, given the numbers are heading for 750,000 or 1 million a week. That is something the Minister has signally failed to do. He has not given us clarity. We have a real problem with this Bill. Unfortunately, we will be returning to this early in the next Dáil.

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