Just a gentle reminder that tomorrow, Friday 5 June is the deadline for public consultation submissions to Eirgrid. Please make your voice heard even if its just a one paragraph email.
The address is yourgridyourviews@eirgrid.com.
I am posting my own submission here for those who would like to read it.
Go raibh maith agat,
Mattie.
Eirgrid Public Submission-
Mattie McGrath TD
I welcome Eirgrid’s commitment to initiate a more authentic process of public consultation for the Grid link and Grid West projects and the acknowledgement that previous consultation processes failed to satisfactorily address outstanding issues of public concern.
The experience I and many other public representatives have had with Eirgrid for most of the last two years is one characterised by resistance to the enormous levels of public anger over the Grid Link and Grid West Projects.
Then Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte eventually appointed a panel of experts to examine several large projects across the country including Eirgrid’s GridLink and GridWest proposals.
To the best of my knowledge the Panel says that it has met four times since the 10th of February and has now finalised and approved the Terms of Reference for comprehensive, route specific studies or reports of fully undergrounded and overhead options for each of the projects.
This is to be cautiously welcomed.
The fact that Eirgrid consistently refuted alternative technical suggestions for the over-head pylon route as unworkable and then admitted they had merit only occurred after sustained public pressure and days of questioning before the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications in December 2013.
I was present for Eirgrid’s contributions and described them at the time as a master class in evasive and deliberately confusing technical jargon.
Thankfully in the intervening period Eirgrid has clearly seen that the public’s tolerance for rolling out massive utility projects in the absence of a clear cost/benefit analysis is at an all-time low.
I believe this has been instrumental in Eirgrid having to drastically reconsider the kind of dismissive and arrogant approach that was adopted for all of 2013.
Whether that fundamental change will amount to anything remains to be seen.
As part of this brief submission I am advocating a principled policy approach to public consultation that is consistent with The Three Pillars of the Aarhus Convention, namely:
Access to Information
Articles 4 and 5 of the Convention concern environmental information.
Members of the public are entitled to request environmental information from public bodies and these bodies are obliged to maintain this information.
This includes information on the state of the environment, policies and measures taken, or on the state of human health and safety, where this can be affected by the state of the environment.
The Access to Information pillar has been implemented in the EU Directive 2003/4/EC on Public Access to Environmental Information and in Ireland by the European Communities (Access to Information on the Environment) Regulations 2007-2011.
Public Participation in Decision-Making
The entire approach of Eirgrid to this Pillar of the Convention has in the eyes of many thousands of people in South Tipperary and beyond been wholly problematical.
As I stated above the sense and the experience has been such that ‘public consultation’ was engaged in by Eirgrid merely as a diversionary tactic to deflect further accusations of a lack of transparency and accountability.
Eirgrid must signally improve and work toward a more authentic and meaningful engagement with the people of South Tipperary.
Under the Convention, the public has a right to participate in decision-making in environmental matters.
Arrangements should be made by Eirgrid to work with public authorities to enable the public to comment on, for example, proposals for projects affecting the environment, or plans and programmes relating to the environment BEFORE they are thrust upon communities as a fait accompli.
Any subsequent comments are to be taken into consideration in the decision-making process. Information must be provided on the final decisions and the reasons for it.
In the European Union, this part of the Aarhus Convention has been implemented by Directive 2003/35/EC on public participation (‘the Public Participation Directive’).
Access to Justice
Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention allows the public to access to justice, i.e. the right to seek redress when environmental law is infringed and the right to access review procedures to challenge public decisions that have been made without regard to the two other pillars of the Convention.
Article 9(1) deals with access to justice in respect of requests for environmental information.
It has been implemented in Ireland by the European Communities (Access to Information on the Environment) Regulations 2007-2011. These regulations provide for an internal review mechanism in respect of information requests and assign the role of Commissioner for Environmental Information to the Information Commissioner. Further information on the work of the Commissioner for Environmental Information (external link)
All members of the public are required to have access to review procedures to challenge decisions relating to the environment, made by public bodies or private persons.
These procedures must be ‘fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive’.
A number of pieces of legislation were introduced to assist Ireland in meeting its obligations under this pillar.
One of the most significant legislative instruments, the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011, introduced new costs rules to apply in certain cases, as well as a requirement that Judicial Notice be taken of the Convention.
It is my hope that Eirgrid will take far greater cognisance of these principles and arrangements in the coming years.
COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
Going forward I want to propose to Eirgrid that a detailed cost benefit analysis of the impact of its proposed projects would be made available to the communities affected by them.
In South and North Tipperary I am thinking specifically of the impact on the Tourism sector; the Agri-food Sector; the Live-Stock Sector, the Environmental Protection Sector, but primarily about any possible implications for the health and well-being of our communities.
Massive pylon activity is a source of reasonable and responsible concern to many in Tipperary.
It is an Issue that is ill-served by dismissive and arrogant approaches which attempt to paint the matter as scaremongering.
Finally let me say; Eirgrid has a lot of ground to cover to rehabilitate its loss of public trust.
This loss has been wholly and entirely the responsibility of Eirgrid who during the course of the ‘public consultation’ to date has issued confusing and contradictory statements.
All of us on this Island are for the renewal and maintenance of a secure and lasting power supply infrastructure.
We want that goal realised through responsible and prudent measures which serve the entire public interest and not just those of a small publicly unaccountable sector of private enterprise.
Above all what communities are demanding is a meaningful say in the role they are being asked to play.
They will not tolerate being ignored or dismissed or destroyed or threatened by interests that are overtly against their wishes.
Eirgrid must work might and mane to engage fruitfully and positively with communities in the clear and certain knowledge that the people are sovereign.
Such sovereignty can be a partner to infrastructural renewal if it is respected and deferred too where the wishes of the community are clear.
ENDS
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