Dr. Catherine Farrell:

In response to Deputy Ó Cuív, interaction with these sites is very important and can be enormously beneficial, as can be seen clearly with the site at Lough Boora which has attracted a large number of visitors. We have a range of local community projects right across from Kildare to Galway and from Roscommon down to Tipperary. It is a great opportunity for communities to take ownership of a piece of cutaway bog, to have a walkway and to use the area productively, through interaction with local schools and so forth. The great thing about those sites is that rare species are coming in and using them and then people can get up close and personal with these species, which is very different from learning about them in a classroom. There is great potential from that perspective.

In terms of the national network of special areas of conservation and natural heritage areas, it is meant to be a robust network. It is not meant to be a network of isolated units that are expected to survive on their own. We are very aware of green infrastructure, connecting up the sites and trying to sustain the populations of these habitats and species into the future. We are working with the National Parks and Wildlife Service on that aspect.

In terms of putting a value on it, I take Deputy Barry's point. As a company we have tried to look at the value in terms of carbon and biodiversity. There are several international studies examining the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity, most notably the TEEB study led by Pavan Sukhdev. We are trying to lead on that front in Ireland and recently organised a meeting on the topic of natural capital and how we can start to put a value on very intangible benefits such as well-being, using the wetlands for filtration to obtain clean water and so forth. We do not have the accounting structure in place at this time to account for that.

We are working on that with other people. Carbon is a complex element, in particular in peatlands. We know that peat is a high carbon value product. When a peatlands is drained, there is carbon in the peat on site. We have a range of studies. In our study in County Mayo we are looking at what happens when we re-wet the cutaway bog. The cutaway is unique because it is an acidic peat medium which lends itself to the regeneration of bog mosses and therefore one can restore functional aspects of peatlands. The study has shown that we have returned the site in Mayo to a carbon sink. That is a great result if we can roll it out across the 6,500 ha of our bogs. We have shown that we can do it in core areas and we need to replicate that across the entirety of the site. Some figures put together tentatively would suggest there is some economic value. We work with the EPA on that. Mr. Phillip O'Brien, who I understand has come before this committee, is the person we engage with on that front and look at it as a potential offset from a national perspective.
In the midlands sites we are looking at re-wetted cutaway, which is re-wetted fen peat. In these cutaways the vegetation is typically sedge or reed. We do not know the answer to that yet. We will have data for two years in 2015. Intuitively one would think that the peat is still in the ground, so that means it is held in situcarbon. We have the reeds on top and that is accumulating biomass. The question is whether that is creating another carbon sink. We will know that in 2015, although with all these things, it is always a case that we need more studies to verify the data.
The other site we set up with the EPA in 2013 was a restored peatlands site. In the big picture, there will be a massive restoration programme in terms of the SSEs and NHAs, Again we will have two years data in 2015. I cannot answer the question, but we are building up the knowledge to feed into the answer.
Deputy Barry had a specific question on what we mean by the term "environmentally stabilised". When one has an active peat production unit, one essentially has bare peat fields. The words "environmentally stabilised" is the term used in our IPC licensing. Condition (10) of our IPC licence states that we need to have a rehabilitation plan for each of our bog units to ensure that the site is environmentally stabilised. That is to assure the licensing authority - in this case it is the EPA - that Bord na Móna does not walk away and leave what can only be described as "an open cast mine". Stabilisation is to ensure the soil is stabilised and there is no potential run off in the future.