College of Business and Law - Doctoral Theses

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    The use of science in EU environmental decision-making: a measure of legitimacy in environmental regulation
    (University College Cork, 2024) Jennings, Rhoda; McIntyre, Owen; Poustie, Mark; Environmental Protection Agency; Irish Research Council
    This thesis investigates the role of science and scientific evidence in EU environmental law. It examines the practical interaction and relationship between science and the formulation and application of environmental law. In so doing, it takes a legal regulatory approach to exploring the science-law interface. The research goes beyond viewing science as a component of evidence-informed policy. It explores whether, and to what extent there is a legal obligation to use scientific evidence in the formulation of EU environmental policy and legislation. This is carried out through an examination of the role attributed to science under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and by exploring the normative role of science as a source of legitimacy in environmental decision-making. The thesis adopts a practical approach to investigating the role of science in environmental law. It develops a a typology of the primary EU science advisory bodies that assist the Commission in its work, and feed into pre-legislative debate. It carries out case studies on ambient air pollution and nature conservation legislation, tracing the use of science in the formulation and application of the law, from the travaux préparatoires to the adoption of the final legislation, and the interpretation of the law by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The research consolidates the exploration of the normative role of science in EU environmental legislation and policymaking, with the actual role of science, by drawing on the concept of legitimacy to develop an analytical framework. This framework is used to discuss more precisely how science is used in the formulation of legislation, and the consequences for the legitimacy of the legislation. The research indicates that there is a wealth of high-quality science advice in the EU. Shortcomings in the regulatory structure of the science-law interface, however, serve to undermine the functional benefits of science. The thesis proposes preliminary methods for enhancing the use of science in EU environmental decision-making.
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    Reconciling the objectives of environmental protection and climate mitigation in EU law: the problem of renewable energy project authorisation
    (University College Cork, 2023) Hardiman, Alison; McIntyre, Owen; Poustie, Mark; EirGrid
    This thesis investigates the contrasting approaches to project authorisation for renewable energy (RE) infrastructure projects in EU environmental and RE laws. It identifies the need for integration and proportionate application of environmental laws as it is sought to deliver the EU’s energy transition. Particular attention is afforded to the environmental law framework, where the objective of climate mitigation as a means of environmental protection as defined within the TFEU has not been effectively incorporated at Directive level. The thesis challenges the fact that EU environmental law has not been amended to reflect EU RE law and policy, and illustrates the problems that have therefore ensued at project level. It analyses the specific elements of the EIA and Habitats Directives, in particular, that do not facilitate or enable the infrastructural development that must necessarily underpin the energy transition. Detailed consideration is afforded to the relevance of the applicable EU principles of environmental integration, proportionality and legal certainty in this regard. It is illustrated within this research that environmental law is required to integrate the full breadth of environmental objectives, including climate mitigation, within the framework of sustainable development. Application of the principle of proportionality is considered as a means of informing appropriate balancing of different objectives within the scope of environmental protection, mindful of the need for legal certainty in order to enable investment by prospective developers. Within this context, the research addresses the tensions and necessary trade-offs arising between contrasting environmental protection objectives as it is sought to develop extensive RE infrastructure. In so doing, a more structured and therefore transparent approach to decision making by competent authorities is proposed. Areas of norm conflict, in respect of which a reframing of EU environmental law is required, are also identified. The aim of this research is to provide a clear focus on this issue within environmental law and to address the finding within EU RE law that the greatest barriers to the development of RE infrastructure are the regulatory processes designed to achieve environmental protection. Once so identified, appropriate and effective means of application of EU legal principles are identified that can contribute to policy integration within this sector. This is designed to mitigate the impending delivery gap regarding RE infrastructure successfully deployed, in accordance with the EU’s ambitious and urgent RE targets.
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    Nurturing blue growth: enabling sustainable development of emerging marine sectors
    (University College Cork, 2024) Giannoumis, Jessica; Wheeler, Andrew; Dooley, Lawrence; Cummins, Valerie
    Current marine resource exploitation practices and management are unsustainable as resource degradation is ongoing and coastal regions struggle to realise sustainable development of marine resources. The key topic of this research is expanding knowledge on the reconciliation of environmental and economic models regarding the sustainable development of marine resources through the EU-introduced concept of blue growth. In the context of this research, blue growth refers to the sustainable development of marine resources, generating livelihoods, and securing well-being from innovation in emerging marine sectors. Blue growth development attracted interest across Europe and beyond, as the utilisation of marine resources is viewed as an opportunity to meet climate change obligations, enable a transition away from finite resources, and creating employment opportunities, thereby enabling long-term regional economic development. Blue growth development initially focused on the development of five emerging marine sectors with economic growth potential including coastal tourism, aquaculture, ocean renewable energy including offshore wind development, seabed mining, and marine biotechnology. Yet, EU coastal regions struggle with the realisation of blue growth as they received limited guidance from the European Commission on what blue growth is and what successful blue growth development looks like. This highlights a need to investigate what nurtures blue growth to enable coastal regions to realise their blue growth potential. This qualitative and interdisciplinary research focuses on the potential of blue growth in coastal regions focusing on the development of emerging marine sectors. In the context of this research, a region refers to coastal regions with common economic activities and characteristics, such as access to regionally specific marine resources, and common administrative characteristics such as specific political and governmental functions, e.g., regional economic development policies. Within the scope of this research, emerging sectors refer to rapidly growing industries utilising innovative technologies to enable sustainable development of regions, job creation, and technological advancement. This research investigates the manifestation and effectiveness of an EU intervention, the ProtoAtlantic project which includes regions of Orkney (SCT), Cork (IRE), Brest (FR), Porto (PT), and Las Palmas (SP) and two in-depth cases in Norway and Scotland. ProtoAtlantic was a Interreg Atlantic Area project, initially funded from November 2017 to October 2020, due to Covid-19, the project was extended to October 2021. The study harnessed an opportunity to engage with a wide range of multiple stakeholders representing stakeholders from government, industry, and academia. Data collection from the ProtoAtlantic cases included extensive desktop research and policy analysis of marine and generic development strategies in each case, analysis of regional blue growth stakeholder workshops which were carried out in each region, as well as analysis of additional material provided through the ProtoAtlantic project such as the outcomes of the ProtoAtlantic accelerator programme, and semi-structured interviews with nine regional stakeholders. The two deep dive cases included the offshore wind sector development around the DeepWind cluster in Scotland and the Norwegian aquaculture sector. Data collection from the in-depth cases included extensive desktop research and policy analysis of marine development strategies with particular focus on offshore wind development in Scotland and aquaculture development in Norway, in addition to 32 semi-structured interviews. To date, limited scientific attention has been paid to blue growth realisation from a marine governance perspective. Even less research has been undertaken to understand blue growth development from a business perspective. The research aim was to expand on how economic opportunities can catalyse sustainable development in a marine context. By achieving economic sustainability, coastal communities may consequently be in a better position to achieve environmental and social sustainability. The findings of this research address this research gap and provide practical contributions on how decisionmakers in coastal regions can nurture and realise their regional blue growth potential. In-depth analysis found that blue growth requires a systems approach which enables the integration of blue growth antecedents, this has been lacking from current marine management approaches. Furthermore, the study found that economic development approaches to marine resource management can secure well-being of coastal communities and ensure sustainable practices to marine resource utilisation. This research offers a modification of Ostrom’s Social-Ecological Systems framework, the expansions of the framework provide insight into collective action, the role of technology development, and the need for bespoke regional approaches to identify and realise blue growth. This research examines the role of regional stakeholders, the need for entrepreneurial activity and clustering activities in driving blue growth development and offers recommendations for policymakers and decisionmakers in coastal regions to nurture blue growth adoption and development. This research also presents a Practitioner’s Guide to Blue Growth which offers relevant questions to enable practitioners and intermediaries in the identification and realisation of their regional blue growth potential.
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    Reforming mental condition defences and procedures in the criminal justice system in light of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
    (University College Cork, 2023) Noonan, Michael Luke; O'Sullivan, Catherine; Whelan, Darius; Irish Research Council
    The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (C.R.P.D.) is the first human rights treaty of this century. It aims to ensure that persons with disabilities have full and effective inclusion in society and are not the subjects of discrimination. Support for the C.R.P.D. was unprecedented, attracting widespread approval from states in all regions, and achieving the highest number of signatories to a U.N. Convention on its opening day. Whilst most of its provisions have been welcomed, the interpretation of several key articles by U.N. bodies has led to some unanticipated issues of compliance with areas of the criminal justice system. It has been argued that the C.R.P.D. requires the abolition of any criminal defence which relieves or mitigates liability because of a disability, and any procedures that declare an accused unfit to be tried based on mental impairment. The relevant mental condition defences for this study provide a defence based on a mental condition caused by an internal factor (insanity, diminished responsibility, and infanticide). No State Party to the C.R.P.D. has shown any inclination to abolish mental condition defences or procedures due to a perception that the interpretations advanced by the U.N. bodies are flawed and unworkable. The summary documents of the drafting process of the treaty show that the potential impact of the C.R.P.D. on criminal justice issues received almost no consideration during negotiations. This means that there has been very little consideration of how criminal law could be reformed in a way that is compliant with the C.R.P.D. As Ireland plans to ratify the Optional Protocol, which permits individuals to complain to the Committee about a C.R.P.D. violation, it is important to conduct a review of domestic law to identify what changes are required. This study establishes that mental condition defences and procedures can be reformed in a way that is C.R.P.D. compliant without the necessity of abolition. To identify whether the existing law requires reform, a normative framework is constructed from principles derived from the C.R.P.D. and used throughout the thesis to improve compliance. The normative framework’s key principle is the prohibition of the deprivation of legal capacity based on a defect in mental capacity. It also provides that determinations of criminal liability which fail to treat persons with disabilities as equals to others are discriminatory and must be abolished. It is determined that the insanity defence could be made compliant with the C.R.P.D. by the creation of several new mental condition defences. It is proposed that the cognitive limb of insanity should be replaced by a legal rule which allows for evidence of a psychosocial disability to negate mens rea. The evaluative and volitional limbs should be replaced with a new defence which focuses on the defendant’s ability to generate alternative choices. The third new defence is for crimes without a subjective mens rea. These offences pose a particular challenge as they do not require moral fault. It is identified that, in exceptional circumstances, other human rights need to take priority and defendants who are incapable of receiving notice about the law because of a psychosocial disability should not be found liable. It is also found that the partial defences of diminished responsibility and infanticide infringe an offender’s right to legal capacity by holding them to a lesser standard of behaviour because of a disability. It is recommended that both defences should be abolished and replaced by discretionary sentencing for murder. Fitness to be tried hearings should be replaced with an assessment of what support is necessary for the accused to participate effectively in the trial.
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    An analysis of firm dynamics and seedbed role
    (University College Cork, 2023) O'Leary, Daragh; Power, Bernadette; Doran, Justin; Irish Research Council
    Firm dynamics research can be considered an important area of study given the relationship between firm dynamics and economic growth. Firm births can increase economic growth and employment (Doran et al., 2016). Meanwhile firm deaths can reduce economic growth via increases in unemployment (Arcuri et al., 2019). However, firm deaths can also reallocate resources and create market room within the economy for other firms (Carree and Dejardin, 2020). Additionally, the post-entry growth of firms is an important aspect of firm dynamics for economic growth because most of the growth derived from entrepreneurship comes from a very small number of high-performing firms (Shane, 2009). As such, some have recommended the prioritising of investment into firms with fast-growth potential to achieve optimal economic growth (Du and Vanino, 2021). The importance of firm dynamics to economic growth is such that government organisations and policymakers look to promote entrepreneurship to achieve economic growth (BE, 2020; EU, 2021). Therefore, research concerning the birth, death, and performance of firms can be considered of interest to governments and policymakers as well as the academic literature. This Thesis looks to contribute to the small firm dynamics literature (Hopenhayn, 1992). Using Eurostat, OECD, and Irish Central Statistics Office data, econometric analysis is used to produce four empirical research papers which examine firm interrelationships, the regional determinants of firm births and deaths, and how the seedbed role influences the performance of new start-ups. This analysis provides several contributions to the literature. Firstly, the competition and multiplier effects set out by Johnson and Parker (1994) are examined and particular interest is paid to analysing these effects across different countries and over different periods of time. Secondly, the role of urbanisation and localisation economies as well as externalities related to regional diversification are examined in determining firm births and deaths across different countries while controlling for the mitigating effect of firm interrelationships. Thirdly, the role of relatedness is incorporated into firm interrelationships to see how competition and multiplier effects operate across different sectors (related and unrelated). Finally, a contribution is made to the literature concerning seedbed role, described by Beesley and Hamilton (1984), by analysing the influence of the seedbed process on the post-entry performance of new Irish firms. The findings of the analyses on firm interrelationships indicate that firm interrelationships can change across time and sectors. Evidence of the multiplier is observed over one year where firm births appear to increase firm births the following year. However, over two and three years, evidence for the competition effect is found whereby firm births can increase firm deaths in two- and three-years’ time and that firm deaths can increase firm births in two years’ time. Furthermore, multiplier effects appear more likely to occur between firms in related sectors and competition effects appear more likely to occur between firms in unrelated sectors. Significant variations in firm birth and death rates are also observed across countries. Findings regarding regional factors as determinants of firm births and deaths indicate that both urbanisation and localisation economies increase firm births and decrease firm deaths. Related variety appears to reduce firm births and increase firm deaths, while unrelated variety is found to increase firm births and decrease firm deaths. Finally, the seedbed process is shown to influence the growth of new Irish start-ups as firms set up by individuals who previously worked at firms which died are themselves more likely to die and more likely to have lower mean annual employment growth during their existence. However, they are also more likely to exhibit fast-firm growth at some point during their existence. Implications for policy and contributions for the literature are discussed in the Thesis.