Mr. Seamus Dunne:

In relation to the 3 km and 15 km zones, this comes up quite often. The legislation states that an appropriate assessment is undertaken where screening identifies a likelihood of the project having a significant effect on a European site. This is true throughout the EU and is true regardless of the separation distance between the project and the European site. The legislation does not lay down the distance but it refers to any project that may interfere with any European site. The advice we received nearly two years ago was that it was not defendable to have a distance of 3 km and not consider European sites outside of 3 km. This is the industry norm in ecology companies throughout Ireland. It is the industry norm with regulators as well. There is a logic to that. The logic is that one can have hydrological connections between a project and a special area of conservation, SAC, that has qualifying interests, such as salmon, lamprey, crayfish, and other, that are greater than 3 km. One can have foraging distances outside of special protection areas, SPAs, that are greater than 3 km. They normally range from between 6 km to 15 km. The 3 km was deemed to be not defendable. We took the advice to go to 15 km.

There has been much attention on the 15 km but not on the other changes that led to the sites being screened in for appropriate assessment. It is not because of the 15 km. The licensing crisis has occurred because of the change in the number of files screened in for appropriate assessment in Ireland, we all know that. The most important change which led to a much higher number of files being screened in was compliance with the European Court of Justice and national case law that determined it is not appropriate, at appropriate assessment screening stage, to take account of the measures intended to avoid or reduce the harmful effects of the project on a European site. In other words, in deciding whether we can screen in or screen out a site, and whether it would have an effect, we can not take account of a buffer zone between the planting and an aquatic zone. In the past, we could have taken that into account and screened it out. That is the most important area where a change in policy arose two years ago, not the 15 km, which led to more sites being screened in than screened out.