Debate contribution: Environmental Crime
Debate contribution by Mr Andrew Muir on .
- MLA
- Mr Andrew Muir
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 7 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Environmental Crime
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5670059
Read the official Assembly record
Text
The Department has taken a range of actions on environmental crime. Additional legislation will be introduced to increase fines and penalties so that we can hold polluters in Northern Ireland to account. There are also measures in the Justice Bill that will deal with issues such as serious and organised crime. I am conscious that my Department has a range of enforcement roles relating to water pollution, waste crime, odours and other environmental issues, as well as farmed animal welfare. As a result, an internal review of the Department's approach to enforcement has been undertaken at my request and will complete at the end of next month. I have asked for that to be completed at speed and have expressed a clear view to officials that the balance of the Department's enforcement approach needs to change.
Too often, the Department responds to breaches by repeatedly spending an inordinate amount of time on seeking to return the operator back to compliance, rather than on seeking prosecutions to compel compliance under the law. Essentially, the Department needs to move faster and firmer in response to environmental crime and farmed animal welfare.
189 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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