Bar for A5 challenges ‘very low’ says SIB boss

Brett Hannam, who has served as the boss of the SIB since 2012, said it was relatively inexpensive to challenge major public developments in the North compared to other jurisdictions.

Alliance MLA Trevor Lunn raised the A5 at a briefing of the Stormont Public Accounts Committee earlier this month.

“The A5 still has not been resolved and I think that there is another judicial review (JR) about to start, if it has not already. Is there any merit in the argument that it is too easy to take a judicial review in this country? If you take one in the South, or the equivalent format...I am led to believe that, it costs a fortune down there to take a JR, and you probably will not get legal aid either,” said Mr. Lunn.

Mr. Hannam said there was a “very low hurdle” for challenges raised under environmental law in particular.

“In fact, that hurdle has been lowered by European law — the so-called Aarhus convention — which enables challenges raised on environmental grounds to be brought at very little cost and risk to the challenger. If you look at the A5, the A6, Casement Park, Arc21, the Southern Regional College Craigavon campus, the North/South interconnector or the Rose Energy plant, all of those challenges have been raised at cost through environmental reasons.

“Now it is possible, yes, as you suggested, that we could address that by looking at the way in which judicial reviews are handled. You could, for example, reduce the length of time that an objector has to raise that objection. Currently it is three months, and in other jurisdictions it stands at one month. However, it would be more sensible to look at the underlying reasons why people are objecting and see whether there is anything that can be done to address those underlying causes, rather than dealing with the symptoms, which are the JRs themselves,” he said.