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Ireland high among EU environmental offenders
31 January 2010 By Niamh Connolly Political Correspondent
Ireland is among the worst offenders when it comes to infringing EU environmental law, according to new figures.
Ireland faced 31 cases for failing to implement or transpose EU legislation last year, ranking behind Spain and Italy, which faced 34 cases each. Ireland was also referred to the European Court of Justice for fines in relation to a directive on shellfish quality.
If that proceeds, it would be the first fine imposed on Ireland for an environmental infringement.
However, John Gormley, the Green Party Minister for the Environment, said that he was ‘‘confident that all outstanding aspects of this case will be completed to the satisfaction of the Commission within the timescale allowed for addressing the outstanding issues’’. Gormley was responding to a parliamentary question asked by Labour Party TD Joanna Tuffy.
There have been ten letters of formal notice, in cases relating to wild birds; pollution prevention and control; the use of genetically modified micro-organisms; water framework directives; waste electrical and electronic equipment, and the monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions.
There are also five more serious ‘reasoned opinions’ of the European Court of Justice relating to dangerous substances in water, the quality of drinking water, habitats, wild birds and the quality of shellfish waters.
A spokesman for Gormley described most of these cases as ‘‘legacy cases’’ that dated back several years.
He said that Ireland was ‘‘on the cusp of a fine on a number of occasions before minister Gormley got in [to office] to deal with this in a proactive way’’.
The spokesman said that the shellfish waters case was only transferred from the Department of Agriculture portfolio to Environment in the last six months. However, Tuffy maintained that there had not been a substantial change in Ireland’s performance since Gormley took over the portfolio.
‘‘We’re still the bad boys in the class in relation to environmental infringements in EU law, along with Spain and Italy," Tuffy said.
‘‘In relation to the number of outstanding judgments that we haven’t complied with, we’re actually the worst."
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