Letters to the Editor: Sustainable infrastructure must abide by environmental safeguards

A reader responds to Kevin O’Donovan's recent article in the 'Irish Examiner' expressing 'understandable frustration with delays to renewable energy projects'

'Planning laws and EU environmental directives... exist because Ireland has a long history of ecological damage and repeated infringements of EU law.' Picture: iStock

Kevin O’Donovan’s recent article — ‘Challenges around infrastructure are finally being tackled’ ( Irish Examiner, December 9) — expresses understandable frustration with delays to renewable energy projects. 

However, his criticism of the planning system and of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) echoes a troubling theme within the Government’s Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce; that environmental directives and judicial oversight are impediments rather than essential safeguards.