Allister questions rationale of environmental report
22 June 2007
Jim Allister MEP has questioned many of the conclusions and recommendations in the report published this week entitled, “Review of Environmental Governance in Northern Ireland”. Mr Allister believes that if this report was implemented it would cost millions more for environmental governance in Northern Ireland without any safeguards that the environment would be better managed.
Jim Allister commented, “This report was commissioned by a previous DOE Minister following an intensive lobby by the environmental NGO sector. I believe the report was biased towards an independent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the time the report was commissioned. The report is supporting for the need of an EPA without making clear what the problems are with the current system or outlining the problems with other EPA’s in the UK.
“This report recommends that the new organisation covers a wide range of issues from environmental health to planning enforcement and control of the rivers agency. The report even recommends that the functions of one of the North South bodies becomes under the control of the EPA.
“The one issue that the report fails to deal with, even though it was clearly in the terms of reference, is the funding of environmental organisation. The new organisation proposed by the report would cost tens of millions to set up. In the report the review team states, ‘Although the review was tasked by its terms of reference with developing a business case for any proposed changes it has not proved possible in the time available to do so.’ It is vital that a business case is carried out for the various proposals before they are debated further.”
“I believe that the new DOE Minister should not waste time in implementing this report. I believe that changes can be made to the current system that ensures that we protect the environment with little additional cost to the tax payer.”
