The Regional Inspection of Environment (IRA) is a service of the Regional Secretariat of Environment and Sea, endowed of administrative autonomy, to which it is duty, in the Autonomous Region of the Azores, to guarantee the fulfillment of the legal standards with environmental incidence.
The IRA develops its activity under protection of the Regional Secretary of Environment and Sea.
There are attributions of the IRA:
a) To supervise the fulfillment of legal and regulation standards in matters of environmental incidence;
b) To inspect establishments, equipments and places or activities, as well as projects and actions subject to legal and regulation standards in matters of environmental incidence;
c) To set up, to instruct and to decide on the processes relative to the illicit ones of mere social ordering;
d) Without damage of the competences of other entities, to practice own functions of organ of criminal police relatively to the crimes predicted in the articles 278th, 279th and 280th of the Penal Code;
e) To issue, in the ambit of the actions predicted in paragraph a), directions and recommendations to the people in charge for such activities;
f) To order the embargo and demolition of works, as well as to make ceasing other actions carried out in violation of the legal standards with environmental incidence;
g) To inspect the execution of projects with environmental incidence financed or supported by the State, by communitarian funds or international organizations.
It still competes to the IRA, to solicitation of the Regional Secretary of Environment and Sea:
a) To carry out studies that aim at the adjustment of administrative practices of services that depend on the Regional Secretariat of Environment and Sea, namely on the subject of licensing;
b) To prepare the diagnosis of situations of environmental vulnerability and to propose measures of preventive nature that meet them;
c) To issue opinion on the projects of diplomas with environmental incidence;
d) To prepare studies of legal nature that aim at the coherence and the rationality of many diplomas with environmental incidence.
In the performance of its attributions, and whenever it appears to be necessary, the IRA can ask for the cooperation of other entities or organisms, including the police authorities.
There are organs of the IRA:
a) The regional inspector of Environment;
b) The administrative council;
c) The advisory council.
There are services of the IRA:
a) The Division of Environmental Inspection;
b) The Division of Technical and Administrative Support.