Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There is a fundamental difference.No one disagrees that we must be attentive to the need for road safety. In that regard there are existing provisions in the Roads Act that allow us to attend to situations which involve a safety problem. The provisions in amendments Nos. 20, 23 and 27 that we have put forward aim to give clarity to and strengthen such powers and make it clear that it is the responsibility of the local authority to address a road safety issue or direct a landowner to do so. That is needed as part of a wider range of measures aimed at good hedgerow management. In many instances, people do not cut hedgerows during the preferred period from September to March when there is a need for their proper management in that way. However, central to the legislation brought forward by the Minister is that landowners are left to make that decision and decide whether to cut hedges in August in a way that we believe will be deeply damaging to wildlife and impossible to police in comparison with the approach we suggest, where it would properly be done by the local authority. The Minister stated this would only apply to roadside hedges. They do not make up a minute fraction of hedgerows, as was suggested in previous discussions on the Bill but rather I understand, approximately 19%, according to the latest or best hedgerow studies. We are talking about giving landowners carte blanche to decide if one fifth of hedgerows should be cut. It would be fanciful for us to believe they will be able to assess ecological risk in dealing with issues such as whether there is a nest in a hedgerow.

The Bill will lead to a loosening of regulations when we should be tightening and clarifying the existing regulations which are not being applied. If road safety is the real issue, as it is in some instances, we want there to be the cutting of hedgerows but it to be done under the control of local authorities and the National Parks and Wildlife Service, rather than handing control over to landowners such that it would be impossible to police, which is what the Minister is doing.