Conserving the emerald tiger: The politics of environmental regulation in Ireland

The emergence of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 was seen by many as an institutional response to a series of protracted environmental disputes which had beset the Irish polity in the late 1980s. For many, the EPA with greater regulatory powers was symbolic of a wider set of changes designed to develop an economy that could survive in the new global economic order without threatening Ireland's ecology. This article challenges this view and argues that environmental policy debate in Ireland is concerned no longer with the extent of ecological degradation, the quality of the environment or encouraging environmental sensitivity, but with organising consent around new definitions of justifiable pollution. In this sense, the central thrust behind the formation of the EPA was not to conserve the environment but to conserve the emerald tiger.