CIEEM Response to TII’s Draft Biodiversity Impact Assessment Standard (23 January 2026)

Here you will find our response to Transport Infrastructure Ireland’s (TII) Draft Biodiversity Impact Assessment Standard (23 January 2026). This response was developed by our Ireland Policy Group.

CIEEM welcomes TII’s draft Biodiversity Impact Assessment (BIA) Standard and its ambition to bring biodiversity into decision‑making earlier in the project lifecycle. However, we highlight several areas where we believe the standard needs clarification and revision to ensure it is legally robust, workable in an Irish context, and aligned with established best practice in ecological assessment.

Key points:

  • We support the focus on biodiversity, the mitigation hierarchy and recognition of CIEEM standards.
  • The draft does not always reflect Irish survey practice and data sources, and may be vulnerable to legal challenge in a highly litigious context.
  • The section on valuing ecological features, including European sites, potentially risks downgrading high‑value sites; we have offered to help strengthen this.
  • The draft’s treatment of irreplaceable habitats relies too heavily on NPWS mapping, leaving some qualifying, but unmapped, habitats exposed.
  • Avoiding the term “significant effects” for non‑EIA projects would depart from established EcIA practice.
  • Requirements for smaller schemes (e.g. local active travel and greenways) are unclear; we call for proportionate expectations and explicit use of lighter‑touch approaches where appropriate.
  • Environmental Protection Objectives should inform descriptions of effects, but significance should still be based primarily on receptor sensitivity, magnitude, duration and reversibility.
  • We suggest that BIA is better framed as an evolution of existing EcIA practice, not a wholly new methodology, given that EcIA already addresses wider biodiversity and policy objectives in Ireland.
  • We suggest that the document should function as flexible technical guidance, as opposed to a formal standard.
  • Accessibility could be improved, especially for early‑career ecologists, through clearer signposting to key guidance and tighter editing to reduce ambiguity and repetition.
  • References to compensation for European sites should be carefully framed and clearly tied to the specific legal context of IROPI.
    ​