Mr. John Fitzgerald:

This case is relatively unique. I cannot think of any other in which we are involved at this level. It has nothing to do with Galway County Council and how it operates. It is operating well in conjunction with the Department. What is at issue is that we have been placed, with Inland Fisheries Ireland, as a secondary consent authority after An Bord Pleanála made its decision. As I mentioned, in the normal course, such developments would proceed once the statutory process had been completed. The problem is not particular to Galway County Council; it is just the way the decision was made.

The two method statements approved were relatively simple. They concerned the construction of compounds and some ground investigation works. We held a workshop with Galway County Council to see how best they could be presented to the Department and agreed to a template for them. It was difficult for both organisations to do this because Galway County Council does not have any experience in submitting method statements for approval to another body, namely, the Department which also has no experience in dealing with them. The lack of engineering expertise in the Department was not an issue because we had not reached the stage of actually looking at the issue of road construction. At that stage we were looking at the design and the nature of the conservation elements. That is why we met council officials in April last year to determine how we could work better together on the method statements and so on. That is the solution which has been reached by Galway County Council in dealing with the project section by section. It may be the best way forward.

I can understand how there is frustration about the project. We did meet council officials in September, but we have not received a method statement from Galway County Council since. I understand, however, that it is in the process of acquiring engineers to do so. The commitment to turn around the method statements within ten days remains. If a method statement for the Bunakill-Maam Cross element of the project is sent to us, we do not see any issue arising because it is outside the pearl mussel catchment area. The element of the project in the Glengowla and Lough Agraffard area is difficult because of the presence of the pearl mussel population.

On compensatory measures, the Senator is probably referring to the IROPI, imperative reasons of overriding public interest, process, whereby projects may go ahead, evn though they may cause damage to Natura sites, if there are imperative reasons of overriding public interest. In these cases, several conditions are required to be met. First, as the name suggests, there have to be imperative reasons of overriding public interest and there have to be no alternatives available. I am sure these arguments could be made in the case of the N59 project. Compensatory measures also need to be put in place to compensate for any habitat loss. As far as I understand, this is not a route Galway County Council or Transport Infrastructure Ireland is intending to pursue at this stage. It certainly is an option, however, that may be worth further consideration.