EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Ireland’s Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020 Topic Box 10.1 Industrial Licensing Process – Public Participation Before the EPA can decide on a licence application, the Agency must carry out a thorough assessment of the application. This includes, in many cases, an environmental impact assessment (EIA) as required under the EIA Directive, and an appropriate assessment as required under the Habitats Directive. The assessment process is multidisciplinary, involving specialists from different environmental areas such as noise, air emissions, and so forth. Prediction modelling is also undertaken to determine local environmental impacts. Public participation and consultation with statutory consultees are central elements of the EPA licence assessment process. If deemed appropriate, an IED licence may be issued with conditions to prevent, reduce and eliminate emissions into air, water and soil as far as possible. The IED promotes the use of techniques that reduce pollutant emissions and that are energy and resource efficient. The Industrial Emissions Directive ensures that the public has a right to participate in the decision-making process and be informed of its decisions and assessments by having access to licence applications, licences and the results of the monitoring of releases. On the EPA’s website 3 each installation has a homepage from where key information can be viewed, such as the licence application, licence(s), correspondence regarding the licence application and inspection, and other enforcement reports (see Figure 10.2 for a flowchart of the licensing process). The European Environmental Bureau – the largest network of citizens’ environmental organisations in Europe – examined how effectively European countries are making information about industrial pollution available to the public online, and identified the EPA website as best practice (EEB, 2017). Continuous emission-monitoring systems can sometimes be used for monitoring important pollutants or processes. Continuous monitoring information has been made available to regulators and the public in a small number of European countries. In Ireland, boiler furnace temperature data from a licensed hazardous waste incinerator are published on the licensee’s website in real time, and half-hourly averaged emissions are published 1 day delayed (Dublin Waste to Energy Ltd, 2020). 3 http://www.epa.ie/licensing/ 258