Legislation to protect people from having their quality of life disrupted by loud noise was published yesterday by the Green Party.
The Neighbourhood Noise Bill is designed to provide a remedy for those who are subject to noise from building work, houses, cars or barking dogs.
The Bill, which will go before the Dáil in the autumn, seeks to simplify and enhance the existing regulations.
Green Party leader Trevor Sargent told a press conference yesterday that existing legislation only dealt with certain types of environmental noise, it involved a range of State bodies and required people to go to court to protect their rights.
He said the new Bill would establish a one-stop-shop for noise complaints and give local authorities real powers to stop noise pollution.
"Excessive noise can be disruptive, annoying and stressful. Noise pollution, including excessive neighbourhood noise, can affect individuals' health and children's learning ability.
"We want to ensure a high quality of life for all so we need to treat neighbourhood noise as pollution and take effective measures to deal with it."
He said in addition to the measures outlined in the Bill the party intended to tighten up regulations to reduce noise pollution on a macro level. This involved amending building regulations to improve insulation. As well as saving energy this would decrease noise pollution and was a win-win situation.
Existing rules on noise pollution from big transport projects were also inadequate. They required local authorities and State bodies to draw up noise maps and agree action plans, but did not provide meaningful timetables or incentives to achieve this. The Green Party would set tight timetables, provide resources and introduce sanctions for deadline breakers.
Party environment spokesman Ciarán Cuffe said noise had not yet received the same attention as other forms of pollution. "All of us have experienced problems with neighbourhood noise at some point in our lives, yet noise hasn't received the same attention as other forms of pollution."
He said noise control officers would be employed by local authorities to take immediate action once a complaint was received, and would have the power to take action 24 hours a day, seven days a week.