Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Philip Nugent, Ms Marian O'Driscoll and Mr. Conor O'Sullivan for coming along today and giving us an overview of this proposal. The sense I have of it is that as things stand, without imposing any stricter or more onerous conditions on any development or doing anything anywhere - I am not saying this in a populist way but on the basis of what I see on the ground - we are heading towards not being able to do anything. It has come to the point where somebody from the National Parks and Wildlife Service or some other enforcer is nearly standing over my bed in the morning telling me not to get out of it. I am serious about this. I am sure they are only doing their job because they have been handed a set of rules to carry out and they have to carry them out.

I understand this issue came up at the European Parliament yesterday and I would cite an example of what I am talking about. Laois County Council paid for a bird survey and €4,000 for drainage work on the River Goul. The survey was completed and because it is now a year or a year and a half old, the council has been told that it will have commission another one. The survey could have cost anything up to between €10,000 and €20,000. The cost involved of a few thousand euro worth of work to take a few buckets of silt out of the river, to remove a silt bank - I am just citing this as an example to set the context - is mad.

What is happening under these regulations is mad. I want to protect the environment and the generations before us protected the environment. I saw slag heaps in England higher than the tallest part of this building. There is no problem in having environmental impact assessments and I do not want to see slag heaps of that height throughout rural Ireland, but I make the point that rules and regulations are crazy. The civil servants in Brussels do not realise, and neither might the civil servants here, what one has to do to drain a section of wetland or to clean out a drain. One has to clean one side first and then clean the other side, even if the drain is only a few feet wide. One has to perform a Houdini act with a Hymac. It is crazy what is being passed down to us. Any members from rural Ireland who are present will verify what I am saying. I come from an environmental background and I want to protect the environment, but what I see being done is lunacy. To compare it with the Taliban, the only thing that is missing is there is no violence involved in enforcing it - not yet anyway. It is crazy.

What impact is this proposal likely to have on special areas of conservation, natural heritage areas and particularly on the bogs incorporated in the lists? Mr. Nugent might give us an overview of Part X of the Planning and Development Act.

I made a point regarding the wetlands. There is a huge contradiction in that the Minister and Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is trying to move us towards Food Harvest 2020. This type of proposal has the potential to drive rural Ireland back 100 years before there was ever a mechanical digger to carry out drainage or to reclaim land. I drive through rural areas and pass lands where I saw people cut turf as a child and those lands are now reclaimed. That has happened in my lifetime and there are cattle grazing on it and, in some cases, crops growing on it. I do not want to see the destruction of everything but we cannot have bogs overgrown and flooding farmlands on the edge of them because a group of people in Brussels decide to impose this proposal on us. In broad terms, we have to make a stand on this and we should test it to the limits.

Mr. Nugent mentioned the cost of the administration of this proposal. I hope the witnesses will not take offence at my saying that civil servants do not normally complain too much about the extra administration work or cost involved in a measure. I do not mean that in a negative sense but they operate in a different way from politicians. However, the fact that they are concerned about this makes me very concerned about it. The amount of paperwork that is required to be completed to do anything in this area is crazy. I outlined the situation regarding the River Goul and county councils, which are stretched to limit, are being told they have to get new surveys done because the ones they have are out of date, even though they will contain the same findings as the new one. I hope in those cases that they go ahead with the works.

One member of the panel might respond to the issues regarding the NHAs and the SACs. We should test the issue of subsidiarity in this context. We might as well take down the tricolour over this House. I am not saying we should get involved in environmental destruction but if we are going to allow ourselves to be trampled on with more regulation and impositions from Brussels, we should call it a day. We should tell the people that this is being run under the direct control of Brussels.