17-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
EU Commission warns Ireland of court action and fines over wind, water and methane failures
In a notice delivered on Thursday, the Commission said Ireland had failed to comply with regulations requiring planning procedures for renewable energy developments to be simplified and made faster.
This would include setting clear time limits for permit-granting procedures targeted to specific technologies or types of projects.
It would also mean referring all projects to a single applications body – In Ireland's case, An Coimisiún Pleanála - whereas currently some go through local authority planning departments.
The regulations also require adoption of the 'presumption that renewable energy projects and the related grid infrastructure are of overriding public interest'.
This would make such projects harder to object to because of personal or localised concerns.
The regulations were due to be written into Irish law, or 'transposed', by July 1 but Ireland, along with Portugal and Latvia, missed the deadline.
The warning gives the Government two months to respond and complete the transposition.
'Otherwise, the Commission may decide to refer the cases to the Court of Justice of the European Union with a request to impose financial sanctions,' it says.
The warning comes the day after wind energy representatives warned politicians that no offshore wind projects would be complete by 2030 despite a Government target of having 5 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity [almost as much as the entire country uses on an average day] by then.
Noel Cunniffe, chief executive of Wind Energy Ireland (WEI), told the Oireachtas Climate Committee that, at best, one of the five offshore wind projects currently in planning would be built by late 2030 but 2031 or 2032 was more likely.
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Mr Cunniffe said hold-ups in planning were a key obstacle, with state agencies not sufficiently resourced to deal with such complex planning applications.
Responding to the Commission's warning, WEI said: 'To get clean, affordable, power to Irish families we need to be taking full advantage of changes in EU law designed to accelerate the development of wind power.
'While transposing this legislation is complicated, it is frustrating that it is taking so long and if this intervention from the EU Commission can help to speed up the process it is very welcome.'
The Commission also notified the Government that it faces infringement proceedings for failing to properly transpose the EU's Drinking Water Directive.
The directive was due to take effect by January 2023 but Ireland is accused of falling short on the regulations governing how temporary restrictions on water consumption are managed when contamination issues or concerns arise.
Ireland also has two months to 'address the shortcomings'.
In a third warning, the Commission told the Government it must comply with new regulations requiring improved measuring and reporting of methane emissions.
Ireland was to provide details of which public authority would take charge of implementing the rules last February but has not done so.
