Mr. Michael Starrett:

The Chairman's questions are thought provoking and I hope to give him an honest response to all of them. In talking about contemporary thinking on heritage, public engagement and all that is to do with natural heritage management, I emphasise that we cannot have a designation, an imposition and a regulation that people do not understand. Otherwise they will rebel against it. The way that the original special areas of conservation, SACs, were transposed into Irish law caused problems. I touched on the fact that the science really only became available to make those decisions once the National Biodiversity Data Centre was established. Once it was there and we had quality data and information, designations and so on could be justified. There is some catching up to be done in terms of public perception. Our research and what we have tried to do is concentrated on improving that relationship and work on public engagement.

The Chairman also touched on legislation for important landscapes in the UK and the USA. For my sins, I spent most of my working life looking at, studying and working in this area. One of the areas where we are quite weak in Ireland is we do not have enough what I would call enabling and empowering legislation which enables and empowers local communities or authorities to identify what it is that they want for their area and to then present the case to do it.