Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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334. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the measures that were taken by the Government and Irish Water to ensure compliance with the Irish State's obligations under the Aarhaus Convention in relation to access to information, public participation and decision making and access to justice in environmental matters. [39182/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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The Aarhus Convention lays down a set of basic rules to promote citizens’ involvement in environmental matters and to improve enforcement of environmental law. The rules are broken down into three Pillars as follows: - Access to information on the environment, which allows members of the public access to a wide range of information on the environment, including information on the state of the environment, associated policies and measures, and on the state of human health and safety, where this can be affected by the state of the environment;

- Public participation which requires that parties to the Convention facilitate public participation in decisions about the environment; public authorities must have mechanisms in place to enable the public affected and environmental 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 provides that the public have access to independent review procedures that are timely, equitable and not prohibitively expensive, to challenge decisions relating to the environment.