John Perry (Sligo-North Leitrim, Fine Gael)

I thank Senator Reilly for raising this very important issue. The Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters was adopted on 25 June 1998. It seeks to ensure that members of the public and their representative organisations can play a full and active role in maintaining and enhancing our environment.

The convention lays down a set of basic rules to promote citizens' involvement in environmental matters and improve enforcement of environmental law.

It has three main pillars: access to environmental information, which includes information on the state of the environment, policies and measures taken, or on the state of human health and safety where this can be affected by the state of the environment; public participation in environmental decision-making, whereby arrangements are to be made by public authorities at national or local level to enable the public affected and environmental non-governmental organisations, NGOs, to comment on, for example, proposals for projects affecting the environment, or plans and programmes relating to the environment; and access to justice, which includes the right to access review procedures to challenge the legality of decisions that have been made which may impact on the environment.

The Aarhus Convention goes to the heart of the relationship between people and governments and is about accountability, transparency and responsiveness. Progress towards ratification of the convention is closely aligned with work at EU level and, in that context, the EU has adopted two directives of relevance. These deal with public access to environmental information - Directive 2003/4/EC - and public participation in certain environmental decision-making procedures - Directive 2003/35/EC. Both directives have been fully transposed in Ireland.