They do the crime you do the time

national | environment | news report Thursday May 03, 2007 11:23 by Immune systems

Government caught lawbreaking again

This morning the European Court of Justice has condemned Ireland once more for violating EU environmental law. The taxpayer has to foot the legal bills. Again.

In case C-391/06 the European Court has found that Ireland failed to implement a four year old Directive on public access to environmental information on time. The Directive is to help people protect the environment by having a right to get info about it from officials

As in similar cases before, Ireland has again been ordered to pay all of the legal costs for being caught out. These will run well into six figures.

Unlike ordinary citizens, members of the government have immunity from legal action for failing to do their job with due care. That means that the money to pay for this latest case will not come out of the pockets of the people in power who are elected and paid to uphold environmental law. It will come from the electorate. There must be a word for that?

Someone might like to ask the Government candidates how much public money has been diverted from places where it was really needed to pay for these embarrassing cases over the last 10 years. Rather than deal with the issue they throw money away defending the indefensible.

Martin Cullen once accused people who took the Government to Court trying to uphold environmental law of 'robbing the public purse' . Do his words have any relevance here?

Ireland has now belatedly moved to adapt its laws to abide by the access requirements in Directive 2003/4/EC.