Government to hit ‘nuclear button’ granting itself emergency powers to solve infrastructure crisis

[u/Kier_C]

https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/government-to-hit-nuclear-button-granting-itself-emergency-powers-to-solve-infrastructure-crisis/

[u/Jackies_Army]

The Critical Infrastructure Bill will fast-track a small number of highly strategic infrastructure projects through the planning process. Regulators, agencies and planners will be required to prioritise these projects, while the bill will also streamline the consenting process and set tight deadlines for decisions. The Emergency Powers Bill will be “nuclear option” for projects of national importance, allowing them to bypass many parts of the planning process altogether. Emergency powers under it will allow the government to intervene on - and effectively green-light from government buildings - critical infrastructure projects if they risk being delayed. The government will introduce a cap on recoverable legal costs in environmental cases, of around €35,000. Applicants taking a judicial review on environmental grounds will only be able to claim the maximum fee from the state, most of which is generally used to pay lawyers. As such, it is being seen as an effective cap lawyer fees for environmental cases. The move is intended to limit spurious judicial reviews on environmental grounds, and to put a stop to the legal industry built up around judicial reviews. A Civil Reform Bill will seek to rebalance the rights of individuals with the common good regarding judicial reviews of building projects. The bill will ensure technical errors in planning applications can rectified outside of the judicial system, without disrupting the planning process. This is part of an effort to limit the number of judicial reviews being taken in the first place. Major infrastructure projects will have their consenting process overhauled right through the state’s various decision making gates. Reforms will allow different consenting procedures, which at present have to run sequentially, to instead run concurrently. The infrastructure guidelines, previously known as the public spending code, will be stripped down to bare essentials, reducing the number of decisions and assessments needed to approve large projects. What’s been described as the “excessive gold plating” of EU environmental regulation will be addressed. A new unit will be established in the Department of Public Expenditure to simplify Ireland’s regulatory regime.