As some of you will know, I wrote
recently to Fair-Murtagh (law firm) to find out about the cost
of having the constitutionality of Waste Management
(Amendment) Act 2002 checked by the High Court.
I did so partly because of a
particular reference in a letter I received from
Deputy Padraic McCormack TD (dated December
19th 2003) which states: " .. I think this validity
was given to him in the Waste Management Amendment Act
2002 when ..."
When I searched the Internet
yesterday for the text of Waste Management Amendment Act 2002,
I failed to find anything.
Later in the day, a very helpful
lady in the legal reference library of Galway University
confirmed that she could find nothing about it in the
reference material available to her either. She did however
find information on a Waste Management (Amendment)
Bill 2002 - which does not appear to have ever
actually become law at any time???
I'm copying this
e-mail to Deputy McCormack so that he can (hopefully ?) look
into the whole matter outlined above some more, and get back
to me.
In the meantime, I have now added
a note regarding the above situation to the top of following
Internet page:
Finally, I would like to state
that I found Deputy McCormack's letter to me dated December
19th 2003 to be very helpful in a number of ways: and still
do, even if it did contain an accidental error of some kind
(which is as yet far from clear to me).
As some of you may already know,
Deputy McCormack was on the Environment Committee
in the Dail at the time the Government
removed powers of decision-making - regarding the location of
huge rubbish dumps and incinerators - from the democratically
elected local government representatives.
With reference to the legal Act
which accomplished this (whatever its exact name and number),
Deputy McCormack has also expressed the view that: "it
may well be unconstitutional" (in his letter to me
dated December 19th 2003). He has also given me to understand
that he vigorously opposed this section of the Bill; but, in
his words: "it was supported by the majority of the Committee
which was made up of Government TD's".
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