Environmental liability in Ireland

Abstract:

Environmental offences (whether causing pollution, threatening to cause pollution, breach of a local authority licence or permit, or breach of an IPC or IPPC licence) may be committed by a range of people from a body corporate to an individual manager and the ensuing liabilities can be civil, criminal or both. Claims can be (1) constitutional; (2) statutory (Irish and European); and (3) common law based. I propose in this paper to deal with these liabilities in the environmental context and also to highlight some landmark cases and what is coming down the track in the future.