Dr. Florence Renou-Wilson:

The review of raised bogs in NHAs was done in conjunction with the SACs. The SACs were the best things as a whole. If we look at raised bogs in Ireland as a resource, the SACs were the best. NHAs were turned into SACs when the habitats directive came into play in the right places. Meanwhile, it was a case of "out of sight, out of mind" with regard to the NHAs that did not change and kept being degraded. Why was this? It was because they were being cut. When it came to looking at them again, they were so badly damaged, I would not even consider wasting any water on them. In some cases, they are bad. This is a fact. There was a scientific review to assess those. In some cases, they were not reviewed with the objective of re-wetting them. That was never done. They were reviewed with the objective of saying that their status as bogs was not of conservation value and that if turf cutting was going to continue on them, it would not impact any other good potential protected sites. That is how it happened. Meanwhile we found that other sites that had never been designated had potential so we have a protected areas network as a resource. We must hold on to that. We can manage to restore this area of roughly 3,000 ha, which is 1% of the raised bogs we originally had. We could get back to it by including those new national heritage areas and new SACs. We will have new SACs. There is no stepping back. We cannot go back. It is damaged. Those NHAs are wrecked.