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

Ireland’s Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020 Topic Box 15.7 Priority Actions for Ireland to Strengthen Environmental Governance as Identified by the European Commission (EC, 2019b) n Better inform the public about compliance promotion, monitoring and enforcement. At a minimum, this should involve publishing information on the outcomes of administrative enforcement action and of the follow-up to detected cross-compliance breaches on nitrates and nature. n Provide more information on the practical aspects of cooperation and coordination between inspectors, police, prosecutors and others to combat environmental crime. n Improve the publication of information on environmental damage. n Ireland can further improve its overall environmental governance (such as transparency, citizen engagement, compliance and enforcement, as well as administrative capacity and coordination). n Increase efforts to be a party to relevant multilateral agreements, by signing and ratifying multilateral agreements that are not yet signed or ratified. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s recent review of the EPA highlighted that the fragmented nature of Ireland’s environmental legislation is reflected in the way environmental protection responsibilities are dispersed across numerous public bodies and two government departments, with limited formal coordination structures (OECD, 2020). Suggested Enablers for Improving the Implementation and Integration of Environmental Policy in Ireland The remainder of this section discusses suggested enablers to help with continued improvement in the implementation and integration of environmental policy in Ireland. These suggestions have been informed by the findings of the Commission EIR (EC, 2019b) and key European and international reports (EEA, 2019a; UN, 2019). The insights gained from the EPA’s involvement in reviewing plans and programmes as part of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) process and in regulation, monitoring and research across a range of environmental policy areas have also informed these suggestions. Policy effectiveness hinges on good policy design; the common elements of good policy design, as identified by the UN, are outlined in Topic Box 15.8. Topic Box 15.8 Common Elements of Good Policy Design (UN, 2019) 1. Setting a long-term vision through inclusive, participatory design processes. 2. Establishing a baseline of environmental conditions, quantified science-based targets and milestones. 3. Effectively integrating environmental, social and economic concerns. 4. Conducting ex ante and ex post cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analyses to ensure that public and private funds are being used with optimal efficiency and effectiveness and that social aspects are being considered in sufficient detail. 5. Building in monitoring regimes during implementation that support adaptive policies, ideally involving affected stakeholders. 6. Conducting post-intervention evaluation of policy outcomes and impacts to close the loop for future policy design improvement. The OECD’s Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance (iREG) (OECD, 2018) show that, despite recent progress, Ireland still ranks well below average among OECD countries in the areas of stakeholder engagement in developing regulations and in ex post evaluation of regulations (i.e. whether or not the regulations are working and achieve their aims), highlighting the scope for improvements in these areas. 404