Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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135. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport further to Parliamentary Question No. 169 of 23 April 2024, in terms of the better Government requirements for a regulatory impact assessment to be conducted when transposing an EU Directive, the reason this was not done before S.I. No. 703 of 2022 implementing Article 7.3 of Directive 2014/94/EU was signed into law. [20661/24]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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In 2022, the Department of Transport put in place Regulations via Statutory Instrument 703 of 2022 to implement Article 7.3 of the European Union Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Directive (Directive 2014/94/EU) which required that all Member States make provision for the display of comparative fuel price information at fuel stations.

Many SIs are relatively minor in their scope and impact. In order to ensure proportionality, only significant Statutory Instruments are subject to RIA. It is primarily a matter for Departments themselves to decide which SIs are significant, and the chapter on proportionality and significance in the Revised RIA Guidelines published by the Department of the Taoiseach gives guidance as to what should be considered significant in this context.

The Regulations in question here implemented only one article of the Directive, article 7.3, which required that Member States put in place requirements that fuel stations display fuel price comparison information in the broader public interest. On the basis that there was little or no discretion possible from the Directive itself in terms of the implementation of this specific article, an internal assessment was conducted rather than a full Regulatory Impact Assessment which would accompany a Bill or a more complex statutory instrument. Effectively, it was considered at the time that there was no distinct regulatory impact beyond the bounds of the direct provisions of the EU Directive.