Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegates. I live in the middle of a hen harrier designated area. All of west Limerick is designated. I have heard about this in chapter and verse for many years. It is not today or yesterday that this issue has become a problem but it is now coming to a head. To be fair, most landowners do not really have a difficulty with the designation and understand the reasons for it and the requirement for habitat protection. The latter is a given. What they have difficulty with, however, is land valuation and farm practices. I refer to what farmers can and cannot do with their own land and how their land is adversely affected by virtue of the designation.

The delegates might respond to the threat response plan of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht through the National Parks and Wildlife Service. It is very focused on the bird. In my part of the world, we are talking about 20 birds. This is a very small number considering that parts of west Limerick, north Cork and east Kerry have been converted to virtual wilderness. The number of birds is depleting year on year and nobody can say definitively whether intensive agriculture, farm practices, wind energy development or scrub affects their population. Is the bird just dying out because such things happen? No one seems to know.

Could I get the delegation's opinion on how this could be brought to a head? The designation will not be lifted - we know that - and this is very clear from the birds directive. In fact, some elements of the threat response plan suggest that even more land might be designated, which would cause its own problem. Could the delegates give some practical suggestions as to what could be done in the short term to make life easier for the landowners under the threat response plan, bearing in mind habitat protection?

Reference was made to GLAS. The delegates might give an example of what a farmer whose land has been designated must go through by comparison with a farmer whose land has not been designated. What payments would be made to them if the only scheme were the GLAS? Those who do not really have the grasp of this matter that the delegates have might argue that if the farmers get a GLAS payment, they will be fine. Could we have a practical example of what designation has meant to the delegates as landowners, even in terms of what auctioneers are saying about what the land is worth?

This issue has featured for a long time and successive Governments have not dealt with it. It needs to be dealt with now out of fairness. The committee's deliberations will be a matter for itself. In the context of the new rural development programme being drafted, all I ask for is that, if the committee is satisfied based on representations made to it by those present, we question whether it is fair that one landowner is subject to very onerous requirements regarding the protection of a habitat while a neighbouring landowner is subject to no such requirements. If the system is not fair, something should be done about it. Having travelled around west and east Limerick on a road trip of public meetings about this issue, I realise people are just seeking acknowledgement of the fact that designation imposes responsibility on a landowner that would not be imposed on him otherwise.

I thank the Chairman for his time and patience.