Abuse of judicial reviews described as 'nasty' by minister

Vivienne Clarke

The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Patrick O'Donovan, has described the abuse of judicial reviews as “nasty”.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with David McCullagh show, Mr O’Donovan said it was “nasty” when somebody in Leinster” could “decide to lob in a judicial review” when there was “sewage and urine excrement flowing through your front door in County Cork.”

“That in my estimation, is nasty. To keep water and sewage and filth, and dirt out of somebody's house is a basic prerequisite of any local authority and the state.

"And we need to get to a situation where the abuse of the courts and the abuse of objections and the abuse of NIMBYism has to be set aside because to be quite honest about it, that's the worst element of infrastructural development which has been berated by objections, berated by people who just don't like maybe what the state are doing and have no regard for the public interest and have no regard for poor misfortunate people, whether they're in Middleton or in Enniscorthy or all of the West Cork towns that had to wait for donkeys years to get delivery of a scheme that ultimately was going to result in them being relieved because some people felt the view of the water is more important than the sewage flowing through their neighbour’s property.”

The Minister added that it was not only flood relief schemes that were impacted.

“It was the bypass of Galway tied up for years. The Salthill works tied up for years.

"I mean you could go across this country, every single county in this country has infrastructure that was tied up between snails and views, and trees and bushes for years.

"And in the meantime, you have people snarling in the M7 every morning trying to get to work because of the traffic volume that has grown.

"And we knew that it was going to grow, but our arduous and protracted planning process just didn't allow for people to get on and do things which are necessary, like building houses.”

Mr O’Donovan said there were some people who “want to speak out of both sides of their mouth and another part of their body all at the same time.

They are very quick to run into the county council with their €20 lobbing an objection because they were at a public meeting and feel that it's the public good because they don't want it in their area.

“It's happening all over the country with regard to housing. It's happening all over the country concerning bypasses.

"The Adare bypass, which is under construction at the moment, thankfully, after many years of delays, has been subject to donkeys years of delays. And had it been built originally it probably would have been open 30 years ago.

“This is not something unique and isn't something that has just jumped up in this government.

"It is too easy in this country to slow down infrastructure in the need of the public, and that's something that the government has to address.”