Report by An Taisce.

This was a preparatory meeting for the forthcoming June 2008 Conference of the Parties in Riga. The Secretariat was criticised for not having produced all of the preparatory documents for this particular meeting, but they did make the point that their budget had been constrained.

I made enquiries of the Secretariat as to what deadline Ireland had to ratify the Convention in order to be a full participant at the Conference of the Parties in Riga. Jeremy Wates, Secretary-General, informed me that the following month was the deadline for Ireland to ratify. And even if they had not completed Ireland’s compliance preparations there was a twelve month period of grace before any of the complaints procedures could be exercised against Ireland.

(When I passed on this information to Minister Gormley following this meeting, he informed me that the Department of Foreign Affairs had objected to ratification in advance of transposing the public participation directive).

I made inquiries as to the most highly regarded electronic node for the Aarhus Convention. There was a consensus that the Belgian node was working very well. (At a subsequent meeting with Liam Johnson of ENFO, I informed him that he should examine carefully the Belgian node, as it’s the best model for Ireland to follow, and it’s possible that ENFO could be asked to implement the node since its purpose is to disseminate environmental information in a neutral way).