Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 14 December 2022
75. Deputy Thomas Pringle asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage if he will provide details of all fines, including the amounts, that his Department or agencies under the remit of his Department, have paid since the start of the 33rd Dáil term to the European Commission relating to cases for infringements of European Union law or failure to transpose EU law in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [62424/22]
View answerOn Tuesday 12 November 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its judgment in case C-261/18 (Commission v Ireland, the Derrybrien Wind farm case), which followed on from the judgment in case C-215/06. The judgment ruled against Ireland and imposed a lump sum fine of €5m and a daily fine of €15,000 until compliance is achieved, plus legal costs.
To date the State has paid €15,980,000 in fines to the European Commission in relation to this case. All payments have been made by my Department.
The lump sum fine of €5m was paid in January 2020. The Commission advised that compliance with the judgment would be assessed on a six monthly basis, with a payment demand notice to issue in respect of each assessment period. Four instalments of daily fines have been paid to date totalling €10,980,000, broken down as follows:
- €2,745,000 was paid in October 2020 covering the period of November 2019 to May 2020.
- €2,745,000, was paid in June 2021 covering the period of May 2020 to November 2020.
- €2,730,000 paid in December 2021 covering the period of November 2020 to May 2021.
- €2,760,000, paid in July 2022 covering the period May 2021 to November 2021.
In relation to the closure of this case, I can advise that a decision on the substitute consent application for the Derrybrien Wind Farm in County Galway was signed by An Bord Pleanála on Friday 4 February 2022.
In their decision, the Board refused to grant substitute consent for ESB’s wind farm, which ends the statutory process seeking to retrospectively regularise the environmental impact assessment status of the wind farm, (the subject matter of the EU court judgment in case C-261/18).
On 16 March 2022, ESB decided to cease operations at the Derrybrien wind farm permanently, and it is understood that ESB is preparing to decommission the wind farm in line with regulatory and legal requirements.
Planning legislation specifies that a development that has been refused substitute consent is deemed to be an ‘unauthorised development’ development by primary legislation, Galway County Council, the relevant planning authority, is required to issue a planning enforcement notice in accordance with sections 154 and 177O(5) of the Planning and Development Act, which among other things shall require the cessation of activity on site.
On 30 May 2022 officials in my Department wrote to the Commission, and a follow up letter issued on 23 September 2022, to seek to close out the related infringement case against Ireland on the basis of the Board’s decision to refuse permission for the wind farm, which unauthorised development is now an enforcement matter for the relevant planning authority. A response is awaited.
The Derrybrien case is the only Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case managed by my Department that has incurred fines during the period covered by the question.
