Where are the impact assessments the Government must do for EU regulations?

Sir, – Your political correspondent Ellen Coyne has reported there were no draft EU laws passed to a special committee to scrutinise although that committee had been set up specifically for this purpose (“EU directives not being passed to special committee before being signed into law”, Politics, February 18^th).

This flies in the face of a government decision of June 21^st, 2005 requiring all departments and offices to conduct regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) on EU directives and significant EU regulations. Moreover, such RIAs are required to be published. As the RIA guidelines point out: “Publishing RIAs makes the policy development process more transparent and accessible to stakeholders and helps to better inform the parliamentary process.”

If, in fact, RIAs are being conducted internally by Government departments but not published, they should be submitted to the Oireachtas’s EU scrutiny committee. – Yours, etc,

TOM FERRIS,