Dr. Ciarán O'Keeffe:

Yes. As soon as the decision was made about the N59 project, the Commission wrote to us, requesting that it be kept informed to ensure we were following the law as laid down in the habitats directive. There was a difficult case on the Bundorragha River in County Mayo where essential works to a bridge ran into difficulties. The best pearl mussel population is in the Delphi fishery where there was also a difficult issue.

Our job is to advise on the nature of conservation issues, but we do not have engineers. It would be useful if local authorities generally had one ecologist among their staff. Sometimes there is a need for better communication. In some counties there are biodiversity officers who might assist their engineering colleagues in explaining why the hell we have to do this. From an engineering point of view, sometimes the obvious simple solution runs into difficulties.