Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am a co-signer of amendment No. 4. I will speak on the group now. This is an attempt to ensure that the right balance is properly maintained in the board. It comes out of a concern, which we will come to later, about appointments to the board. There is currently a requirement to have two persons with environmental expertise. That is no longer guaranteed in the new way that the balance of the board is set out, where environmental skills are listed as one part among others, whereas there was previously a provision for an individual who would specifically have that expertise. There was a guarantee of that expertise being represented.It is again an attempt to be consistent with the current legislation to say that there would be the balance of expertise but that there would be a particular focus on ecological expertise, experience and environmentally sustainable development.

Amendment Nos. 23 to 25, inclusive, in this regard go further. Amendment No. 23 opposes section 6(a), which sets out that the Minister shall, as far as practicable, ensure ordinary members of the board are persons who have satisfactory experience of, and it has a range of issues from infrastructure to development, housing, planning etc. The reason I am looking not to have section 6(a) come in is because the current legislation and current panel system are much stronger and clearer in that regard. The panel system sets out certain areas for the nomination structures and ensures a certain number of persons would be coming through these different nomination structures. There have been concerns about some aspects of the operation of the panel system. Those aspects could easily have been addressed and I have amendments later which would address those concerns about the panel system, for example, the issue whereby an entity that no longer existed was allowed to nominate two members to the board. That concern should have been addressed, but it is not a problem with the panel system; it is a problem with the implementation of the panel system. Instead of specific strands of experience being fed into the board, there is a general soup of lots of different skills which, as far as practicable, may or may not be balanced.

I address this in my amendment No. 25, which deletes "in so far as is practicable", because it may be decided that it is not practicable to have some of these skills and we end up with three or four people from one area of expertise. That was one of the issues previously in the Climate Change Advisory Council, when it ended up with a load of economists and barely any scientists. The concern in how this is newly constructed is, again, that we are not going to end up with an appropriate balance. "In so far as is practicable" is a very wide get-out clause which was not there under the previous system because there were actual strands feeding in.

Amendment No. 4 is almost a new or modern take on the balance that specifies ecological expertise, whereas my amendment No. 28, while it does something similar, mirrors the language that exists in the current legislation. Under the current legislation, the Minister would ensure that at least one ordinary member appointed under the section was a person who, in the opinion of the Minister, "has satisfactory experience, competence or qualifications as respects issues relating to the environment and sustainability". That is in the current legislation. I was told when I questioned this in briefings was that such a person was not always appointed. I would suggest that, if the failure was on the part of previous or current Ministers - I do not know what periods people were not being appointed for - had we had somebody with that expertise on environment and sustainability appointed to the board and performing his or her functions properly, as provided for in the current legislation, An Bord Pleanála might have lost fewer cases in the courts and fewer judicial reviews because it was found repeatedly to have failed to apply environmental law correctly.

The Minister is going to the biodiversity summit and we had the citizens' assembly on biodiversity. One of the assembly's top recommendations concerned Ireland's failure to apply European environmental law properly. Environmental law is not a limit. It is a context in which plans are made and things are built. It is not about not building or not granting planning permissions. It is a matter of building things and planning things correctly. The process would be much shorter and quicker if it were applied at the beginning so individuals did not have to pick it up at the other end through judicial reviews or by going to the European courts. The idea that, after the citizens' assembly on biodiversity and An Bord Pleanála being shown not to have applied this properly, the only safeguard has been removed and disappeared from this new legislation, and environment goes into a general mix instead of having specific designated expertise, is frankly wild and incredibly counterproductive. It will not only damage the confidence of anybody who cares about the environment in the planning system but also damage the effectiveness of the planning system. There is no guarantee that aspect will be there, that specific element that was recognised years ago in the original planning Act. Why is it now, when we are supposedly recognising we are in a climate and biodiversity crisis, that it is no longer recognised in this legislation?