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THE HIGH COURT has set aside “in their entirety” the State’s regulations that allow for the industrial extraction of peat from Irish bogs.
In a lengthy and detailed judgment, Mr Justice Garrett Simons held that proceedings brought by environmental group Friends of the Irish Environment challenging the regulations should be allowed on certain grounds.
The group claimed that the regulations were inconsistent with EU environmental laws.
In what is considered a significant landmark judgement, Justice Simon’s decision means that peat cannot be extracted from areas larger than 30 hectares from Irish bogs unless the developer has planning permission to do so.
The regulations are known as the 2019 European Union (Environmental Impact Assessment (PeatExtraction) Regulations, and the Planning and Development Act 2000 (Exempted Development) regulations 2019.
The regulations exempted those involved in industrial peat extraction from having to obtain planning permission for that activity. Extraction was instead to be licenced by the Environmental Protection Agency.
While the exemption to obtain planning permission came into immediate effect last January, the regulations provided for a lengthy transitional period before the new licensing regime came into full force and effect.
This allowed peat extraction by entities that had neither planning permission nor a licence, to continue during that transitional period.
FIE claimed the effect of the new regulations will create a retention mechanism for the unauthorised industrial extraction of peat, and allow this activity to continue for many years in an unassessed and unregulated fashion.
The group furthered argued the regulations were in flagrant breach of EU directives on the protection of the Environment.
FIE, represented by James Devlin SC with Oisin Collins BL, and Margaret Heavey BL, instructed by solicitor Aoife O’Connell, also contended the regulations disapply existing domestic laws intended to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Habitats Directives, which should have been implemented here in 1988 and 1994 respectively.
FIE’s action was against the Ministers for Communication, Climate Action and Environment, the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government, as well as Ireland and the Attorney General.
In its judicial review action, FIE had sought various orders and declarations including one quashing the making of the regulations by both the Minister for Communication and the Minister for Housing in January of this year.
The defendants opposed the action and rejected the group’s claims. Justice Simons in his decision said the regulations should be set aside.
He said that certain aspects of the legislation used to bring in the 2019 regulations were inconsistent with European Directives on Environmental Impact Assessments and the Habitats Directive.
Member states of the EU he said had a limited discretion to regularise development which has been carried out in breach of those two directives.
However legislation concerning the regulations being challenged, the judge said exceeded this discretion.
The judge said that legislation lacked any possibility of suspending peat extraction during the transitional period.
There was also an absence of any circumstances in the regulations that would allow a party extracting peat without a licence or planning permission an opportunity to regularise their situation.
In addition, he said that there were no proper legislative provisions in the legislation to ensure that any assessment of a site where peat is extracted on a large scale is both prospective and retrospective.
The judge further found the shortcomings of the legislation were similar to the previous planning legislation which he said had been condemned by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The new regime he said leaves projects which have not been properly assessed or assessed for the purposes of the two EU directives undisturbed.
The judge did find that there was no legal obligation to carry out an environmental assessment of the regulations prior to their adoption, nor did he agree with the claim that the regulations amounted to an interference with judicial independence.
The case will be mentioned before the court in October.
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The exemption for farmers to tear out trees and ditches and infill are destroying habitats all over Ireland – totally at odds with the EU Directive. It is about to get worse.
@On the Up: They are actually not allowed under dept of agriculture regulations.
@Ashling Fenton: not allowed doesn’t seem to apply to a farmer on his own land where no one can see him. Much like the laws about hedge cutting that are not adhered to in this country whatsoever.
@Dermot Foley: All farms to the last square inch are mapped and monitored, and farmers are penalised if they breech dept rule’s, so in fact you are wrong. Facts not opinions!
@buaman: …via satellite!
A shame to see Bord na Mona in this position – they have provided an amazing level of stability in the midlands. Supporting families and in a lot of cases preventing mass immigration from rural areas, villages and small towns in the midlands. I can not comment on their input outside my own region but they leave a giant void. There is nothing to replace this stability.
If we were in a position to convert already to this ‘green dream’ then sure, it’s the right thing to do; the reality is we spend more on oil. You can’t make electricity out of hope, it needs to come from somewhere. ‘As long as it’s not us’ doesn’t solve climate change and it won’t prevent the price of oil spiralling as wars erupt and wells deplete.
The intention is in the right place but it leaves us even more dependent on volatile markets and in our (financial and geographical) climate extremely exposed. It hasn’t been thought through at all imho. It will put the midlands into its very own recession (and many of us don’t remember the last one stopping).
@Artugal: Build small modular reactors to replace Edenderry, Lanesborough & Shannonbridge.
A decade of construction jobs and 50 to 80 years of stability with well paid jobs without the landscape raping or pollution of the BNM years.
@Artugal: How about a couple of cigarette factories?! That’d create lots of jobs!
Bord no morea
Nice gesture, maybe, but are doomed. While activists seek to stem environmental damage and global warming with increased energy bills to their peers, more affluent countries are fracking for oil to keep energy prices down. In the long term I doubt it will make any difference except perhaps to determine the pace of our demise.
@Denis McClean: thought this was a good news article. Well done on bringing me down man.
@Dermot Foley: No worries. It won’t kill all of us, just most of us.
Goddam hippies stopping us ruining our country
@john: I know, it’s just awful that we can’t now continue to destroy our natural peat bogs just for cheap heating and garden peatmoss
@Barry Somers: someone/company bought the Bog ……………. acid Turf
@Barry Somers: That’s where you are wrong and indeed this well funded – from the UK as far as I can ascertain – bunch of hippie do gooders too. There’s a huge difference from a carbon standpoint, between the massive extraction by BNM for burning commercially or domestically and horticultural use. The latter is not just a bit of peatmoss for your garden but the basic ingredient for a large portion of food grown in Europe. The producers of this raw material are also among the most environmentally aware and have in place long term plans for the after use of the bogs on which they operate. If they are stopped now, who will carry out these plans afterwards?
Germany & Poland have large opencast coal mine s, yet they are not stopped
The only thing we should be burning is uranium or perhaps thorium…safe, clean, environmentally sound.
@Gavin Tobin: apart from the waste..
@Scott Hazel: sssh don’t mention that stuff. Just dump it in the ocean
@Scott Hazel: Relatively minor amounts of waste that can be reprocessed & vitrified for storage. It’s already a well managed issue.
Compare that with oil, gas, coal and peat where the waste is simply dumped into the atmosphere by the millions of tons.
@Gavin Tobin: Exactly. Four Chinese made modular generation four into Moneypoint would do the job. Do a deal with them for our beef. Break the cartel. The “jobs in the bogs” scam has been massively damaging to our climate response. A billion gone in there already, from our carbon taxes, sorry P.S.O.
Anyone on about waste or safety just hasn’t bothered to learn the facts and get their information straight from Homer Simpson. http://www.bene.ie
@Gavin Tobin: Nuclear energy is the most expensive form of energy once u take in to account the waste. fukushima proves that nuclear energy is far from safe.
@Leitrim303: Official death toll from Fukushima is 1. How many deadlines already Frimley coal & oil and their exhausts today alone even in Ireland?
Nuclear is the safest form of power generation barely non and is estimated to have saved 8 million lives already by displacing dirtier power sources.
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