Mr. Neil Foulkes:

On section 70, which is specifically what the Chairman asked about, I have acquired some information from Tipperary County Council. As part of a project initiated by the council, it sent a questionnaire to the road engineers in all 31 local authorities. Twenty-seven local authorities responded. Some of the responses from the road engineers are interesting. With regard to availability and difficulties in getting landowners to fulfil duties, the availability of machinery and competent operators was not an issue for road engineers. Let us consider the argument that we need to cut roadside hedges in August so machinery will be available to get into the fields in September and onwards. There are periods from September to February when the ground is not trafficable. Surely that is the time when the machinery operators should be out on the roads cutting. If it is a question of resource availability, taking nesting birds into account, one should avail of opportunities between infield and roadside operations depending on weather conditions at the time. Therefore, the argument does not seem to hold water.

With regard to how section 70 works, based on the responses of the road engineers to the local authorities there is a great disparity between how various local authorities implement the section. There are even differences between municipal districts within local authority areas. There needs to be a review of section 70 because it is being implemented in different ways by different local authorities.

I can give various statistics on why road engineers believe there are difficulties in getting roadside hedges cut. One concerns inspection, monitoring and enforcement costs. Some 67% of authorities indicated a problem in that regard. Sixty-seven percent of them said they could not enforce section 70 because they could not identify the landowners in order to have them enforce their duties. Sixty-three percent said a lack of landowner awareness was an issue. I have a few quotations-----