THE Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, has decided to go ahead with the controversial £23 million sewage treatment plant in Galway Bay without any commitment from the European Commission that it will fund the project.
If the Commission maintains its opposition to the scheme, the Government could lose £17.25 million in EU funding 75 per cent of the total although Mr Howlin said he would continue to press the Commission to recoup, his Department's expenditure from the Cohesion Fund.
In a speech to Galway City Council last night, the Minister said he believed construction of the Mutton Island treatment, plant should be advanced as quickly as possible and, to this end, he had approved contract documents for a causeway to the island.
This would enable Galway Corporation to seek tenders with a view to starting construction of the causeway and associated trunk sewer later this year.
The corporation has also been asked to speed up work on the detailed plans for the treatment works and outfall.
Mr Howlin criticised the Commission for delaying the project since early 1994 first, by querying the cost of the scheme, compared to possible alternatives such as land based Lough Atalia, and more recently, the visual impact of the proposed causeway to Mutton Island.
Strongly disputing this, he said "I am genuinely concerned that the Commission's action in seeking to conduct a post EIA (environmental impact assessment) review of the environmental aspects of this proposal, is fraught with danger for the viable conduct of environmental impact assessments in the future."
It could lead to the EIA process being undermined, encouraging, interest groups to refrain from making their case within their own countries and to do so instead at a later stage to the Commission as a final court of appeal.
