Ireland facing EU fines over environmental failures

IRELAND is facing multi-million euro fines from the European Union from this autumn for a raft of environmental failures such as contaminated water.

Environment Minister John Gormley has met European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas in Brussels to discuss eight outstanding court judgements against Ireland and 30 other pending problems.

The most urgent issue is that of contaminated water, where the European Court of Justice ruled against Ireland almost five years ago over water being infected with e-coli from sewage and slurry.

A new issue emerged yesterday when the commission said it is taking Ireland to court because despite warnings, the authorities have not taken steps to control the standards of private septic tanks.

Other existing judgments against Ireland relate to the Government’s failure to correctly bring EU legislation into Irish law, including in relation to preserving birds and habitat.

They all carry a lump sum fine of several millions of euro and a substantial daily fine until the problems are resolved.

Mr Gormley said after the meeting he was determined to solve the problems and wanted a guide as to how Ireland can best avoid and deal with commission action against the State on such issues in the future.

“I have assured Commissioner Dimas of my intention to solve our difficulties as we move forward,” he said.

At what was described as a “quite intense” meeting, the country’s first Green Party Environment Minister also discussed the impact of the M3 motorway on Tara, and the Lismullin site in particular.

This is part of a potentially much larger problem as the commission challenges the National Development Plan (NDP). Ireland exempts infrastructural work from Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and did not carry out EIAs on projects in the NDP.

However, the commission contends that some of the projects such as football pitches cannot be considered infrastructural and so must be subject to an EIA.

Mr Gormley described the issue as complex and said: “We will be responding to the commission as soon as possible.”

Meanwhile TaraWatch yesterday picketed Irish embassies worldwide, as well as the Dáil, to protest at the Government’s refusal to heed EU warnings that M3 works at the Hill of Tara are illegal. The group organised protests in London, New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Laura Grealish of TaraWatch said they were protesting outside the Dáil even though it is closed because “the Greens not only agreed with Fianna Fáil to give up on Tara, but agreed to quit work for the summer early too. We hope these protests send a strong message to both Mr Gormley and EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas,” she said. “Minister Gormley does have the power to save Tara. He just doesn’t seem to have the political will.”