This under-performance has been increasingly called out by environmental NGOs as well as grassroots and youth-led movements. These rights are protected in the Aarhus Convention, which has been part of the EU legal order since 2005 and was ratified by Ireland in 2012. The legislation would, according to the Environmental Pillar, a coalition of national environmental organisations, “row back on major changes introduced just a few years ago to enable ordinary people, their organisations, and environmental NGOs to challenge bad environmental decisions. In these types of cases, the normal rule, that the losing side must pay the winning side’s legal costs, is not applied. The Bill, in its current form, will have a chilling effect on environmental litigation and will seriously damage environmental oversight and democracy in relation to bad and unlawful planning decisions.

Source: The Irish Times December 30, 2019 00:45 UTC