Proposed EU chemicals law will hit jobs - IBEC

The business and employers group IBEC has said that proposed laws which aim to regulate the use of chemicals in Europe, are a prime example of good intentions producing an utterly impractical solution.

At the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business today, IBEC said the laws could seriously damage the competitiveness of Irish industry.

IBEC called on the Government to ensure that the final legislation is workable, balanced and does not impact on the competitiveness of industry.

"The current draft of the legislation would create a bureaucratic nightmare for companies, which would add to their costs and put jobs at risk. No government should sign up to the regulation until its impact is fully assessed," said IBEC Assistant Director Marion Byron.

"The aim was to have clear legislation to control chemicals produced and placed on the EU market, which would protect human health and the environment. There is a strong possibility, however, that many chemical raw materials will be removed from the market as a result of excessive compliance requirements.

"There are much more effective ways of achieving the health and environmental aims of the proposal, without the costly bureaucratic system that is currently proposed. The legislation is unwieldy with over 12,000 pages of text and totally incomprehensible to those with no scientific background.

Hundreds of thousands of producers, importers and users of chemicals throughout Europe will be obliged to supply public authorities with forms on the potential hazards, volumes and uses of about 30,000 chemicals. The burden on the public authorities and on industry of processing all this information would cause paralysis.

"The chemical testing and administration costs to Irish industry of the current proposals are estimated at over €180m over 11 years, according to a 2005 Forfás report. However, the cost to downstream chemical users is estimated to be even higher, at around €300m. The ICT hardware industry and SMEs are likely to feel the greatest impact,’ said Ms Byron.

REACH was tabled by the European Commission in October 2003 to assess and authorise some 30,000 chemicals in Europe. It stands for registration, evaluation, and authorisation of chemicals.