granted planning permission in April<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nHe said the government wants to deliver and \u201caccelerate\u201d that road and that it is \u201ca matter for government to decide what projects we want to fund and deliver\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not for NGOs to dictate that to government or to use our court system to fundamentally delay projects,\u201d he said, adding that disapplying climate legislation \u201cde-risks\u00a0certain elements of judicial reviews\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said that circumventing the climate law \u201chelps narrow the scope for judicial reviews for certain projects, and in my view, we\u2019re accountable for delivery as well as wider obligations\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said there has been \u201can excessive use of the courts\u201d when it comes to objectors applying for judicial reviews of major infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I would say that our wider obligations to meet our climate targets can\u2019t just be seen through the prism of whether we\u2019re going to build a particular ring road or not,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have multiple objectives across many departments, and it\u2019s not for NGOs or advocates to dictate to government whether we should progress a particular project.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nine projects the minister announced would be fast-tracked using the new legislation fall into three categories: water, energy and transport.<\/p>\n
The transport projects are the MetroLink in Dublin, the Cork Area Commuter Rail Programme and the Galway City Ring Road.<\/p>\n
The water infrastructure projects are the Water Supply Project for the Eastern and Midlands Region, the Greater Dublin Drainage Project and the Limerick (Bunlicky) Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrade and Bioresource Centre.<\/p>\n
The energy projects are the North South 400 kV Interconnector, the Moneypoint 400 kV Series Capacitor Project and the Letterkenny 110 kV Redevelopment Project.\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Authoritarian\u2019<\/p>\n
Green Party leader Roderic O\u2019Gorman, in response to Chambers\u2019 remarks, said the minister \u201ckeeps searching for villains to blame for his government\u2019s slow pace at delivering infrastructure\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s still only able to cite one single instance of the Climate Act being used to delay a project. At the same time, An Coimisiun Pleanala has to take an entire extra year to decide on the Eastern and Midlands Water Project.<\/p>\n
He said Chambers \u201cshould focus on resourcing the Coimisi\u00fan and local authorities to process applications rapidly, rather than inventing imaginary enemies\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ois\u00edn Coghlan, a policy adviser and former CEO of Freinds of the Earth Ireland, said Chambers\u2019 remarks were\u00a0are \u201cdisingenuous to say the least\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the Galway ring road was delayed \u201cbecause An Bord Plean\u00e1la admitted that they had failed to consider the government\u2019s Climate Action Plan at all\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the government\u2019s move to get around Section 15 of the Climate act in order to fast-track \u201cpotentially very polluting projects\u201d was \u201cdelusional\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only reason to \u2018disapply\u2019 the law is if you intend to break it and you don\u2019t want anyone to be able to catch you and take you to court,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is ironic, to put it mildly, that minister Chambers made these announcements on a day when Europe is reeling from the impacts of wildfires across the continent, including in Ireland. He is essentially saying he\u2019s happy to add more fuel to that fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Environmental campaigner and founder of climatechange.ie John Gibbons compared the conduct of the government to that of an authoritarian state.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an outrageous attack on civil society,\u201d he told The Journal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the government was \u201cspitting in the face of hard-fought EU legislation\u201d as well as the Climate Act, which was passed by the last government five years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIrish politicians cannot be trusted\u201d when it comes to climate policy, he said.<\/p>\n
He said government politicians have \u201ccompletely normalised these vicious attacks on climate defenders\u201d in an effort to \u201cscapegoat\u201d, which is \u201cpure populism\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINISTER FOR PUBLIC expenditure Jack Chambers has said that a key part of Ireland\u2019s climate law has to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,154954,254598,42426,18,13,14,148033,191158,6,19,17,26736,11,12,15,16,5,254599,7,8],"class_list":["post-602175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-climate-act","tag-critical-infrastructure-act","tag-department-of-public-expenditure-and-reform","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-friends-of-the-earth","tag-galway-ring-road","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jack-chambers","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-section-15","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}