Dr. Alex Copland:

I will conclude on Deputy Catherine Martin's comments. Yes, we could lose the curlew completely. If we have declining species and we are not doing something for it, then it is a risk. We do need to address the issues and take all reasonable steps to tackle the issues. There are a huge number of issues that are now impacting on the curlew.

They include predation, destocking and habitat damage but there are many other issues in the area of forestry development in the uplands and the draining of agricultural land. There is a huge number of issues affecting them, so we must use every resource at our disposal to try to protect them to make sure they continue. Yellowhammers are not quite there yet but they are on the red list and are doing very badly. The last species to become extinct in Ireland was the corn bunting, which is very closely related to the yellowhammer. Extinction can and does happen.

There is no baseline against which to compare. Three years of bird nesting seasons have come and gone since the start of this consultation and data have not yet been collected, despite requests. We collected some with funding from the Heritage Council this year, but it was only a very small amount of data in a couple of counties. We need to have a good system of data collection on which to base the policy rather than to bring in legislation and then see what happens.