Dr. Ciarán O'Keeffe:

I appeared before the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine a few weeks ago when we discussed the issue of commonages. I have been working for many years with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, initially in County Donegal and more recently in Dublin. Dr. Kelly was an inshore fisheries development officer in south Kerry in a former life and is familiar with many of the issues involved. We circulated this morning a note on the current state of play in regard to statutory nature protection. It is worth reflecting on this discussion which is about identifying a valuable resource for sustainable use. We spoke a great deal this morning about the protection of this resource and how to maximise the benefits from it. Much of what we deal with in terms of nature protection is about protecting that resource. As Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív stated, issues arise about ensuring the best possible use of the resource. Reflecting on our discussion on commonages some weeks ago, I was struck that the commonage issue first arose when tourists who were walking the hills started to ask what was being done to address the overgrazing that was destroying the hills. The matter ended up in the European courts and Ireland was told to sort out the issue.

If we look after the resource we have huge potential for using it subsequently. I do not want to take all the time of the committee by going through the note we have circulated page by page - members are probably familiar with most of it - except to say that the main drivers of our work are the EU birds and habitats directives which have been around since 1981 and 1993, respectively. They require us to designate Natura 2000, the European network of protected areas for a substantial list of habitats, including many marine habits, and also quite a few species, including the grey seal, harbour seal, harbour porpoise and bottlenose dolphin. Those directives put very strict protection on all citation species, the whales, dolphins and porpoises, regardless of whether they are inside or outside of a line drawn on a map. We have to look to that very carefully.

The EU directives set the criteria by which we had to select those sites, a process whereby that would be reviewed over a period to ensure that each member state contributed a fair amount to the overall European network and the legal means for protection within those sites.

On the marine side, Ireland has a very substantial and rich biodiversity. Therefore, there is an obligation on us to protect marine and coastal sites to a substantial extent. We went through a process some years ago where the EU Commission convened a meeting to see what we had proposed. It was not totally happy with what we had done and required us to do some more, as a result of which in recent months the Minister published a small number of additional SACs under the habitats directive. The protection of the sites is laid out in Article 6(3). While I do not want to go into the detail of it, what it sets out to do is to make sure that any proposed use or development of one of these SACs or SPAs in the case of birds is consistent with the objectives and that the use is sustainable. When this arose, other colleagues and I embarked on a series of meetings around the country explaining, particularly to fisheries and agriculture interests, what was coming in and having a discussion on its implications. What we said at the time was that existing uses appear to be consistent with having a rich nature value on the site, otherwise we would not say this was an important area. Subsequently a European Union court case, notably the Waddenzee judgment in the Netherlands, laid down that the licensing process, for example, for aquaculture had to be gone through whether or not it was traditional. In other words, it was not enough to say we have always had cockle fishing here and that we will continue with it. The judgment made clear that such activities were required to undergo a proper assessment.

This became a key issue in a case taken in the European Court of Justice against Ireland in respect of the birds directive. An issue which has occupied us greatly in recent years is putting in place a coherent system which is agreed by the EU Commission as a response to the European Court of Justice judgment whereby there is an integrated process of setting objectives for the sites and using that to assess aquaculture or fisheries licence applications within those sites. The final determination is made by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

There are many people who are trying to have a clear regulatory path in order to be able to run businesses. We have done much work in collecting the data on all the SACs and SPAs around the country in order that we can feed it into a process within the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine whereby it can issue licences and fishing can proceed. We have made substantial progress in that area and a system has been set up. It is lengthy and difficult. Given that we have been through a European Court of Justice case, inevitably we have been required to do things even better than if we had passed under the radar. We are proceeding at a good pace at this stage and providing the information as necessary to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

We have almost finished the entire process. I wish to inform the committee that there is a final formal process of legal designation by the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for the SACs and we have to go through a notification process. There is nothing new happening in this area. There is no new legal protection and no new sites. It is a final formal process that must be gone through.

In regard to the birds directive sites, the SPAs, we have not yet looked at the marine territory and the offshore areas to ascertain if there are any areas which are of such importance as to warrant designation. Therefore, some work will continue in the coming years as resources permit and as the pressure comes on from the European Union for us to finalise that process.

I did not bring any information on the economic value of these. Clearly much of the tourism, particularly in the western half of the country, goes to areas which are of high nature value and where protecting it is valuable. I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív that more could be done in terms of using what we know about these sites, particularly where we have substantial amounts of scientific information, which will be of interest to a certain category of visitor, and to point out that these are of European significance if they cannot see that for themselves. There is already substantial activity, quite apart from the land-based tourism. The committee will be well aware of the whale watching business, the dolphin watching business and the seal watching business. Where I live on the east coast, north of here, in the past couple of years, three young men got a boat. They and their fathers before them had been lobster fishing and now they are doing sea tours. It is a small but developing business and it appears sustainable. They go into the areas that are protected under the habitats directive to keep the birds and the bird colonies around Lambay Island and Skerries Island and are reaping the benefit of these areas.