New environment agency for Northern Ireland
11th July 2008, 2:34 pm
The new Northern Ireland Environment Agency launched on 1st July, replacing the Environment and Heritage Service. Alongside launching the Agency, the NI Environment Minister announced a range of new measures to modernise and strengthen environmental regulation.
See CommunityNI news for more, http://www.communityni.org/index.cfm/section/news/key/010708_environment_agency, or go direct to NIEA at http://www.ni-environment.gov.uk.
UPDATE: There has been criticism that this body isn’t an independent agency, as in the rest of the UK. Community NI quote Friends of the Earth: “This re-badging is a cynical and expensive exercise. The NI Environment Agency will be part of DOE, answerable to the Minister and subject to political interference. But its name may lead the unsuspecting to believe that it is an independent agency, like those elsewhere in the UK and Ireland.”