Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

To add to that, the section our amendment No. 410 deals with states: "A planning authority shall prepare a strategy for the conservation, protection, management and improvement of the natural and built heritage and landscape in the functional area". It continues, "The strategy shall include objectives for the conservation, protection, management and improvement of", and then it gives a long list of things. The Minister of State can see it in front of him: UNESCO sites, archaeological sites, places and features of natural beauty, etc. We propose to add "areas subject to Special Amenity Area Orders and the identification of areas where such orders would be beneficial for the community or biodiversity". Our amendment therefore allows for establishing that this is for biodiversity or community, and it is about protecting those things, so I do not really see how the clash the Minister of State talks about comes into play. The only scenario I can imagine is where we have already designated somewhere as a special amenity area and then somebody comes along and says it should not be a special amenity area because having it as such conflicts with biodiversity objectives, which is pretty unlikely, to put it bluntly. That is a pretty tenuous argument. I therefore do not really see why there would be any difficulty with the principle of what we are saying.