European Court of Justice

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 11 October 2023

Wednesday, 11 October 2023

Ceisteanna (128)

Mark Ward

Ceist:

128. Deputy Mark Ward asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage if he will provide details of the judgements made against Ireland in the Court of Justice of the European Union in each of the past five years in respect of matters which are the responsibility of his Department; the nature of the cases and judgements in question; the total amount in euro of fines and/or penalties paid to date associated with each adverse finding broken down by amount paid by day, week, month and so on, as per the judgement; the remedial procedures, if any, that have been undertaken by the State to address each of the judgements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44334/23]

Freagraí scríofa

Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage

The information requested in relation to judgments made against Ireland in the Court of Justice of the European Union over the past five years in respect of matters which are the responsibility of my Department is set out in the table below.

CJEU Case No.	Nature of Case	Remedial Actions taken to date	Cost
C-216/18	Failure to comply with Council Directive 85/337/EEC on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment as amended by Council Directive 97 /11/EC.	Compliance with the judgement required ESB, the owner and operator of the windfarm, through a subsidiary company, to submit an application for retrospective EIA known as substitute consent to An Bord Pleanála (ABP). ESB submitted this application in August 2020 and ABP signed its decision on this substitute consent application on Friday 4 February 2022, refusing the application. Following this decision, the independent retrospective EIA process is now complete. The European Commission advised that once a final instalment of daily fines is paid, which covers the period 13 November 2021 to 4 February 2022, an internal process will be initiated to propose to the College of Commissioners to close this file. Payment in respect of his final instalment of daily fines was made in March 2023. My Department is in discussion with counterparts in the Commission regarding the formal closure of this case, which it is anticipated will happen in the coming months.	€17.225m
C-427/17	Failure to ensure compliance with the requirement of Council Directive 91/271/EEC concerning urban wastewater treatment.	A Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) judgment issued against Ireland in March 2019 in relation to compliance with the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive in 28 urban areas. My Department, accompanied by Uisce Éireann, met with European Commission officials in June 2019 and proposed a programme of measures to ensure that the findings in the judgment were addressed. Uisce Éireann continues to make progress on the agreed programme of works. 19 of the urban areas in the judgment have been resolved to date. My Department provides 6 monthly reports to the Commission, the most recent in June 2023. Fines have not yet been imposed in this case. As part of Budget 2023, I secured funding of over €1.65 billion to support water services and €1.56 billion of this will go to Uisce Éireann. This overall investment will deliver significant improvements in our public water and waste water services. Many serious challenges do remain which will take sustained significant investment. It is key to addressing Ireland's shortcomings in water and waste water infrastructure including compliance with the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive.	Nil
C-444/21	Failure to appropriately designate SACs and to set conservation objectives under Article 4(4) and to set necessary conservation measures under Article 6(1)of the Habitats Directive.	In this case the court found against Ireland on the three main elements of the case but dismissed the remainder of the action. In particular the judgment did not make a finding of persistent and systematic breach by Ireland. It is important to note that the findings of the court relate to the position on 9 January 2019, and do not take account of actions taken since. Significant progress has been made by Ireland in the meantime, across all areas of the case – further information is available on the NPWS website. Officials in the NPWS and AG's office are examining the judgment in detail, and are developing a plan of action to address matters arising. Officials in my Department have also recently met with Commission Officials to discuss a programme of actions to resolve the matters identified in the judgement.	Nil

Further detail in relation to the all three cases are available on CURIA - Home - Court of Justice of the European Union (europa.eu) or at the links provided above.