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EPA calls for expressions of opinion national |
environment |
news report
 Tuesday June 27, 2006 14:28 by EPA fan
 Rare event for a public body in Ireland The EPA website today invites you to give them your opinion on how well they do their job. This is newsworthy as it is a rare event for a State agency to put itself into the spotlight in this way. However the call for opinions needs a little more publicity than simply appearing on the EPA website. Indymedia's newswire allows readers to learn about stuff like this from a central point - that is what makes Indymedia so valuable. The Environmental Protection Agency hit the headlines recently for claiming that it was not, after all, an emergency response agency. This followed criticism of the slow response of the Agency to a series of polluting incidents around the country. The EPA did a little navel gazing and decided that its job really was to advise management on how to adopt good work practices. Dealing with the messy or even dangerous aftermath of careless or deliberate toxic leaks was, the EPA said, the job of other people - like the Guards, or maybe the Fire Brigade, or the County Council (well maybe not the County Council if it was outside office hours). Now the EPA is asking you to tell it what you think of its service. It is running a customer survey on its website and whether you want to be or not, you are one of its customers. |
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Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3State agencies are always putting themselves in the spotlight.
It should be on a bulletin board.
The delivery language is too light , its not even erring on the side of caution.
feck up a few rivers/streams- o shit, lets have a bit of navel-gazing.
Anyone interested in engaging with EPA can access their website or is the response so fecking low that an alternative media campaign is necessary?
The EPA when it was set up, I believe had great aspirations for the protection of the environment. Unfortunately, these aspirations are now driven by industry, and evaluated by profit for these industries. The bar is set so low for the environment that policies for to-day's spin are paramount, without the caution for the future being argued, or properly evaluated.
For what do the EPA take responsibility ? Try and find out and you engage in "pass the parcel"
The integrity of the EPA was compromised when Minister Cullen appointed the then Project Manager of Indaver as a Director to the EPA - prior to this Company getting a licence for their incinerators in both Meath and Ringaskiddy. Both of these were granted later. Nobody from this "independent" body spoke out about this action, so they must have found it acceptable.
A prime person who argued Indaver's case at the planning oral hearing being appointed soon after as a Director to the very body judging the merits of granting a licence to her previous employer's company!!!!
Has anyone heard a note of caution from this independent body on the dangers of coupling hazardous facilities with much needed infrastructure in the fast tracking of the SIB, knowing how long it takes to gather information on risks associated with hazardous projects. If it took the EPA an unprecedented nine months after an oral hearing to assess the "complex information" for a licence for a toxic incinerator, surely "customer service" deserves some acknowledgement of the risks, and some expression of caution, and not an exercise in PR.
Chris Murray misses the point: it is a standard tactic by EPA types to run a survey like this under conditions which will give them the results they want. That is why they would prefer if Chris had his way and bumped this news off the wire. In the EPA's ideal world the only people to reply to the survey would be those who like to cosy up to the EPA. Then you can write their press release yourself along the lines of '98 percent satisfied with EPA yadda yadda'. It is part of a campaign to shore up their crumbling image, as is their big publicity push on the 24 hour litter hotline .... which is no such thing, but that's a whole other story.