Ibec warned today that proposed EU regulations aimed at the chemicals industry could seriously damage the competitiveness of Irish industry.
At the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business today the employers group said that the proposed EU REACH regulations are "a prime example of good intentions producing an utterly impractical solution."
REACH was tabled by the European Commission in October 2003 to register some 30,000 chemicals in Europe.
'The current draft of the legislation would create a bureaucratic nightmare for companies, which would add to their costs and put jobs at risk. No government should sign up to the regulation until its impact is fully assessed,' said IBEC assistant director Marion Byron.
'The chemical testing and administration costs to Irish industry of the current proposals are estimated at over €180 million over 11 years, according to a 2005 Forfás report. However, the cost to downstream chemical users is estimated to be even higher, at around €300 million. The ICT hardware industry and SMEs are likely to feel the greatest impact,' said Ms Byron.
'There are much more effective ways of achieving the health and environmental aims of the proposal, without the costly bureaucratic system that is currently proposed. The legislation is unwieldy with over 12000 pages of text and totally incomprehensible to those with no scientific background,' Ms Byron said.