EU Commission Legal Challenge to Tara Action

Today sees the beginning of a legal challenge to be taken by the Commission, which unfortunately will not halt construction at Tara, but seeks to highlight the poor legislative protections and haphazard approach we take to planning construction near archaeological sites. As well as the issues of Tara the challenge will look more broadly at Irish failures to ensure interactions such as those between pollution-control measures and the landscape will be adequately assessed and taken into account when making planning decisions. Read here a letter to the Indo, from a person likely to be disappointed at the benign nature of the challenge. Ultimately it is just one of 37 infringement challenges Ireland faces over environmental breaches. We are an embarassment.