Mr. Micheál O'Connell:

Thank you very much, Chairman. I do not have a huge amount to add to the committee's deliberations today. I am involved in a group called the McGillycuddy Reeks Study Group - also known as a trust or community group. It is a group without any particular affiliation to any other group. We have been kindly invited to participate today and we are grateful for this opportunity that has been given to us. We are endeavouring to bring together the entire community of what is a particularly small area nationally, but a substantial area in Kerry, to try to redress the disintegration of rural life that is taking place within that area. The area is rich in natural resources and has the highest mountains in the country. It is also an area of great beauty, but the human habitat is being destroyed on a daily basis.

The purpose of the McGillycuddy Reeks Study Group is to examine ways in which that might be redressed. We do not have a particular outcome in mind, nor do we look at it on the basis of what is wrong. We are looking at what is there and what we can do to improve it. Part of the problem nowadays is that, because of increased mechanisation, industrialisation and the Internet, people are acting very much as individuals rather than as a group. We are trying to redress that development.

We are not particularly interested in an outcome that makes the rural community dependent on hand-outs. We want to promote a means of making a livelihood that is not so dependent. We look at tax breaks ahead of hand-outs, but that is all in the future. All we are doing is carrying out an audit of resources in the area. Hopefully, we can become a pilot for future plans in other areas. We are looking at what might be achievable when we get our audit back. It is being worked on at the moment and in the next few months it will hopefully be available. We can then move on to the feasibility stage.

We would like to support those who wish to make a living in this area by guiding them through the regulatory quagmire that affects rural areas, including SACs and SPAs. An individual who is trying to take on this quagmire is simply washed away by the flood of red tape. If we can encourage groups to work together as communities, we can then pool our resources and get through that quagmire. European regulations are not necessarily something that this committee or the Dáil itself can change at the moment. We have to work with them and that is the reality of the situation, but we cannot do so as individuals. We have to persuade those who are making the decisions that they have options, which is what we will continue to do.

We endeavoured to get support from the South Kerry Development Partnership which is supposed to be a support body for groups such as ours. However, after about six months of red tape we just gave up. In a matter of four days, overseas supporters provided the same amount of money that we needed to carry out a feasibility study. Those involved in conservation and agricultural projects abroad can see the value of this, but our own Government cannot. Nonetheless we will progress. We do not want to be in a situation where we are always looking for hand-outs from the Government.

That is a brief introduction to our work. We do want a forum to be able to communicate with the various organisations with which we will have to deal. A substantial portion of the McGillycuddy Reeks is designated as an SPA and an SAC by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, so there is very little that can be done. However, we want people in the Government to meet us and talk to us, instead of just coming along at the very end and saying that we cannot do that.

There has been a lack of consultation, which is what my colleagues here have been speaking about. We would like to be able to approach some people and have them listen to us at this early stage so that when we come to them they will say "That is the thing you were talking about. Yes, we have looked into that and these are ways we can get around the legal quagmire."