Mr. Richard Cronin:

Without getting too much into the complexity around how the designation and the management recommendation would work, in a management plan for a site, you can include monitoring requirements or obligations so that you can create monitoring obligations for those on site or for the site itself. Monitoring is carried out by a number of different competent bodies in the State and by others, such those involved in citizen science monitoring. You could then identify who is appropriate to do the monitoring and as part of not just the designation but the management recommendations for a site, you would have a piece of monitoring that take place with it. There are different levels of monitoring for different sites. A scientific research site might have a lot of monitoring because it is very sensitive or fragile, while monitoring might be less frequent for something with a slower recovery time. It is certainly part of the process of ensuring that you are travelling in the right direction towards a conservation objective.