THE Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins, has agreed to meet representatives of the Save Galway Bay environmental group over the Mutton Island sewage treatment scheme. There has been a series of frank exchanges by letter between the group and the Minister following the Government's decision to proceed with the £23 million sewage treatment plant despite EU reservations.
An adviser to the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, will also attend the meeting on April 15th. It takes place against a background of repeated claims by the group that Mr Higgins had made a U turn on the issue of location. The group says when he was a Galway city councillor he was against locating the plant on Mutton Island - a stance defended consistently by current Labour councillors.
The group also claimed Mr Higgins has been largely silent on the decision to proceed taken by his Cabinet colleague, Mr Howlin. Many of Mr Higgins's strongest supporters in his Galway West constituency are active in the SGB group. Mr Higgins's former director of elections, Mr John Cunningham, is spokesman for SGB. He resigned from the party after the decision to proceed with the Mutton Island project was announced in January, prior to the European Commission's verdict on an application for EU structural aid for the project.
Mr Higgins confirmed in a statement that the meeting was to take place "because of on going difficulties the anti Mutton Island lobby has with the Government decision", and added that further meetings between the parties might take place.
Meanwhile, a European Commission sponsored European Court of Justice against the Irish authorities is continuing, on the basis of its view that the development would contravene the EU Wildbirds Directive. The petitions committee attached to the European Parliament ruled last month that the action was justified on environmental grounds.