Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 10 April 2024
Select Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
Planning and Development Bill 2023: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source
I have some knowledge of this area. If we take an unauthorised quarry and the damage that has been caused by it and if it comes to enforcement around it and remediation, remediation does not necessarily mean that you fill in the entire quarry, restore it, get a load of rock, bring it back to the quarry it once was and undo ten years of extraction. That does not necessarily mean remediation. If it is an environmentally sensitive area, remediation could mean taking a number of measures to try to undo some of that damage and create some sort of environmental re-balancing in terms of biodiversity, water tables, etc. That does not necessarily mean that you simply do a full remediation and fill in the quarry. Likewise, unauthorised peat extraction does not mean you come along and restore the entire peat that has been extracted-----
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