Dr. Cathal Gallagher:

We are lucky as an organisation to have local expertise on the ground. Those people not only deal with county councils and planning issues but also review planning applications and authorisations. If a request for authorisation to do something is submitted, we make recommendations. The answer is “Yes”. We worked closely on the 73,000 barriers. We worked with some of the network information. We can understand where those culverts are under roads or where the bridges are. We have been working with the data sets relating to those properties.

We are very resource limited in developing the programme. Through the work of a few dedicated people in IFI who have a passion for this area, we have only now reached the point of developing the tools we need to broaden the programme. We will not mitigate all of the barriers. Rather, we will work with everyone involved in the field to help in that regard.