Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Supreme Court recently issued a decision on various issues with regard to the legality of the leave to apply for substitute consent process. Substitute consent allows applicants in exceptional circumstances to make a retrospective application for a project on which an environmental impact assessment should have been carried out before being undertaken but where that assessment was not carried out. The exceptional circumstances pertaining must be set out in a leave to apply application to An Bord Pleanála. The board determines whether the circumstances are sufficiently exceptional to allow the applicant to be provided with the opportunity to apply for substitute consent.

The Supreme Court has found that the legal provisions on substitute consent do not sufficiently implement the directive on environmental impact assessments in light of various decisions of the European Court of Justice describing how the elements required by Irish law for an application for leave to apply for substitute consent could not be described as exceptional. Urgent amending legislation is needed to deal with that issue. When can we expect such legislation to be brought before the House?

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