In 2018 the Tánaiste told the European Parliament that Ireland was a climate laggard and promised to do much more to protect the environment. Four years later, the European Commission is not very impressed with the Government's progress. A director in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Environment, Aurel Ciobanu-Dordea, recently gave a speech in which he did not just give the Government both barrels, he actually rolled up in a tank and launched a volley of heavy fire in its direction. I do not have time to list all the egregious breaches of environmental laws and standards that he cited among his laundry list of complaints, but I will just give a flavour. He noted that 50% of Ireland's urban wastewater is still not treated in compliance with the urban wastewater treatment directive. In case there is any doubt about how shameful this is, it should be noted that said directive dates from 1991. Leakage rates are one of the highest in Europe, currently at an enormous 40%. The water framework directive has still not been fully implemented. The deadline for that was 2003. Meanwhile, almost half of Ireland's rivers have unsatisfactory water quality due to high nitrate levels, which have increased by 26% since 2014.

On our biodiversity crisis, Mr. Ciobanu-Dordea highlighted that many of our bird species are in serious decline, with 54 now on a red list and facing extinction. Further, just 2.5% of our marine waters are designated marine protected areas. The EU target to which we have agreed in this regard is 30%.

On failures of governance, Mr. Ciobanu-Dordea said he was particularly concerned with the punitive cost to the public of access to justice, with anyone wishing to take an environmental case forced into the most expensive legal arena in Europe, which is the Irish High Court. Also of deep concern to the Commission is the recent trend among developers to issue strategic lawsuit against public participation, SLAPP, suits. These are being launched against environmental campaigners. This manifests as wealthy developers threatening individual members of community groups with financial ruin by suing them in the High Court for defamation if they dare to challenge planning decisions. The Government's answer to that charge, if the Tánaiste's colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, is to be believed, is to make it even harder and more expensive for campaigners to take these cases.

How are we expected to take the Tánaiste's commitments on the environment seriously given this shameful record? Could he confirm his intention to further butcher our planning laws and make it even harder and more expensive to take cases to protect the environment? When will the Government publish the review of our defamation law, which for months has been sitting on the desk of the Minister for Justice?

I saw some media reports on the report in question. I have not had a chance to read it, and it would not be fair to comment on it until I have had a chance to do so. When I said in 2018 that Ireland was a climate laggard and our ambition was to be a climate leader, I meant that. At the time, an NGO that scores countries on where they stand in terms of climate action and environmental commitment placed us in the lowest tier of countries. We have now moved up slightly. We are in the second-lowest tier. We are certainly not a leader, but we are not in the laggard group either anymore, and that is because of the work that has been done since 2019, ably led by the Minister, Deputy Ryan, in this coalition. We have a long way to go, whether it is in terms of climate action, water quality or biodiversity. We understand that as a Government and we are working very hard on it.

On planning, what the Government intends to do is what is set out in the programme for Government, which was supported by all three parties in government and signed up to not just by Deputies but also by ordinary members of all three parties. That is to make sure that we have a planning process that makes decisions quickly, appropriately, and fairly. We have a system in Ireland where, generally speaking, the planning application goes through a council, a decision is then made and people have the right of appeal and they can appeal to An Bord Pleanála. That is the process. It is not expensive for people to make an objection to the council or make an observation to An Bord Pleanála. Judicial reviews are only supposed to happen on a point of law. That is the whole point of a judicial review. It is not supposed to assess whether it is right or wrong to grant planning permission. That is for An Bord Pleanála to decide. Its planners are the experts. The point of a judicial review is not to rehearse the planning arguments or the rights or wrongs of a particular development, it is to double check that An Bord Pleanála or the council followed the correct procedures. That is what a judicial review is supposed to be about. Some people are trying to turn judicial reviews into something else. That is manifestly wrong in my view.

If we look at the number of planning cases that go to judicial review in Ireland compared with other countries, we can see that there is a higher percentage here. It is easier to get something judicially reviewed in Ireland than in other countries. That is a problem. There may be different reasons for that. It may be due to deficiencies in our planning laws. If that is the case, we need to change them. It may be because of mistakes being made by councils and An Bord Pleanála, in which case we need to make sure they make fewer mistakes. It may be the case that they do not have enough resources or expertise. We may need to help them with that as well, but we also need to bear in mind that under our process, when a judicial review happens, a judge does not necessarily have to hear both sides of the argument before allowing a judicial review to take place. Sometimes a judge can allow a judicial review without actually hearing what the consequences could be, and there can be consequences.

I thank the Tánaiste.

Big investments on which I have worked very hard were nearly lost to Ireland because of the delays caused by judicial reviews. Some were lost. That is a real consequence for real people who lose out on jobs and lose out on investment, and we have to take that into account.

The increase in the number of judicial reviews in this country coincides completely with the introduction of the strategic housing development, SHD, planning process. That is because SHDs bypass local democracy, so there was not an opportunity for people to put in planning objections to local councils. They only had the opportunity to raise objections with An Bord Pleanála. If that failed, the only course open to them was judicial review. The fact is that more than 90% of the judicial reviews relating to SHDs were successful. This indicates that those people were 100% correct in bringing those reviews and that the fault is not with them for bringing the reviews or for clogging up the judicial system, it is with bad planning and bad planning laws and comes down to an inability on the part of people to engage with democracy and planning decisions at local level.

I note the Government has decided to do away with the strategic housing developments, SHDs, but it gave so much time and opportunity to developers to launch hundreds of them in local communities. We are dealing with these. I deal with them in north Wicklow and every few weeks there is another application which people want to object to. Can the Tánaiste respond to those issues please?

I thank the Deputy. The thinking behind the SHDs was to speed up planning and to get planning permissions through more quickly for housing and apartments. It did not work which is why we had to change our policy on strategic housing developments by going back to something similar to an older system where the application is made to the council first and then there is a right of appeal to An Bord Pleanála.

From the Deputy’s contribution it sounds to me that she thinks judicial reviews are all about housing. They are not. A major expansion of Intel in north Kildare was threatened by judicial review. It was a hugely important project for this country in terms of our industrial development and the tax revenues we receive to help pay for healthcare, childcare and housing and in providing jobs for people, not just in Kildare but in the Deputy’s constituency, Wicklow, and in my constituency, Dublin West. Really important road projects are threatened by judicial reviews. In time, I am absolutely sure that we will see the same happen with the metro and other important public infrastructure projects.

It is a problem that the building of important public infrastructure, such as roads, railways and windfarms to help deal with climate action, cost more and take longer in Ireland, in part because of judicial reviews. We need to deal with that.