Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are certain EPA licences for which you do not have to go through the same rigmarole as when you are going through EIA and appropriate assessment on the bogs. I have done all this and Mr. Lucas can vouch for everything we have gone through on the bogs.

I have one question for all the witnesses and Mr. Lucas will be familiar with this. Under the habitats directive, you had to say whether a bog was degraded or restorable. Even though they are talking about rewetting bogs, there are an awful lot of degraded Bord na Móna bogs that it will not be possible to restore. That is my experience and anyone involved in bogs would agree. This system does not even give you the opportunity to state that the bog is degraded. The drains could be every 12 m apart and the bog would be a degraded bog. The projection under the EU habitats directive was - and Mr. Lucas can correct me if I am wrong on this - that the bog had to be restorable inside a period of 30 years. With the best will in the world, many of them would not have been restorable, including the likes of the Bord na Móna bogs, if we call a spade a spade. From everything I have looked at in legislation under EIA, appropriate assessment and the whole lot, there is nothing to state that a bog can or cannot be restored inside a 30-year period. That is laid down in EU law. Why is there not something on that?