Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, is here to take this question. I raised it last week and still have a number of questions arising from the response I got from the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke.

The background to this matter is that works carried out in Emo Court appear to have been done without the necessary derogation licence and inevitably led to the disturbance of a significant long-eared brown bat roost. In regard to the timeline, the works were detected in November 2019 and an inspection by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, followed in December 2019. That found there was very little evidence of bats at that stage other than swept-up bat droppings and a dead bat. In response to that inspection a letter was sent to the Office of Public Works, OPW, at Emo Court to say the works as proposed and already carried out may be contrary to the legislation and inadequate protection was put in place. An ecological report that stated the mitigation was inappropriate and could not prevent disturbance to the bats was ignored and on that basis no further works were to be done pending the outcome of the investigation report.

The question today arises from the fact that last week we heard they were emergency works. We know that is not the case because a scoping exercise was carried out with the ecologists and the basement was clearly listed as planned works. They were not emergency works. I have been working on this for a number of months, trying to get to the bottom of what exactly took place. It appears that one arm of the State was very concerned about the actions that were taking place at Emo Court and the fact that they were done without a derogation licence. However, another arm of the State, the OPW, is saying that is not the case and that they were emergency works. The first parliamentary question response I had was a complete denial that the works took place at all or that any bats were disturbed.

Will the Minister of State release the report that was carried out by the National Parks and Wildlife Service in January 2020 with the full list of recommendations? Can he confirm that on that investigation there was a recommendation for prosecution, given the fact that the OPW had carried out works that were not licensed and that led to the disturbance of the bat roost? They are the questions at the nub of this issue. Is it the case that the National Parks and Wildlife Service recommended a prosecution and somebody, at some point, has intervened to make sure that did not happen? In that case, there would be a very serious situation where we would have senior civil servants deciding on who should or should not be prosecuted. That is the simple question. Will the Minister of State release that report, with its recommendations unredacted? Can he confirm or deny if the recommendation for prosecution was made?