Mr. Thomas Welby:

We see it in a cross-county border context with Mayo. Mayo has created a very successful greenway. Large sections of the greenway go through special areas of conservation, SAC, designated lands. Mayo County Council did not have to seek planning permission and there was no input from the National Parks and Wildlife Service. On a number of occasions, Galway County Council has been in court with the National Parks and Wildlife Service in respect of hedge cutting at the side of the road. I personally believe that there seems to be a different standard in Galway.

We want to be very specific regarding the project we are pursuing because we believe it is a major issue. I am going to show the committee the interaction that Mr. Pat Warner, the National Parks and Wildlife Service's regional director, had at the aural hearing for planning permission. I will pass it around when I am finished. I am going to read the committee a number of excerpts from it. This document is the complete amount of what he said on the day. Mr. Warner began by saying that it was important to note that the proposal is to upgrade an existing main road using almost entirely the same footprint and drainage channel. He said that it would exchange the roadside drains, at least in part, with more modern ones designed with the knowledge of the need of aquatic species such as salmon and freshwater pearl mussel. He also stated that the proposed land take of 0.007% of the SAC was clearly an insignificant proportion. He finished by saying that it was reasonable, therefore, to conclude that, once constructed, the new road would be better for nature conservation that the current one. In the context of the works programmes, he said that they were well-established engineering precautions and that there were no reasons to question their efficacy. Mr. Warner stated that the detail contained in the document submitted in support of the application was impressive and professional and that it was clear that the developer took these issues seriously. This was said by a representative of the National Parks and Wildlife Service when he was at the planning aural hearing. He finished his closing statement by noting that the National Parks and Wildlife Service found no reasonable probability of significant damage from the development. He said that since then, he had listened to all the submissions at the hearing and had heard nothing that would make him modify his original position.

Effectively, the regional director of the National Parks and Wildlife Service was at the planning application in 2012 and those were his submissions in respect of it. That man is gone and he is retired now. My belief is that there has been a change of personnel and a change of attitude. That is why we need a national approach to these projects. It is totally unsustainable to wait 18 months for the reports to even be acknowledged, not to be told that there are issues with the reports, but simply for them to be acknowledged. There is total inaction. We cannot be spending taxpayers' money and not even getting a response. It is totally inappropriate.