Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

We had to do a lot of this stuff in trying to show we were not having an adverse effect in the line of the habitats directive and all that. Had our guests hydrology and ecology reports? I heard a scientist saying once that a bog was like a paper bag and that if you filled it with water and put one hole in it, the whole bog was gone. It was the most wrong statement ever made. I saw scientists doing all the studies and depending on the type of bog, the type of turf that is in it, whether it is black turf, the permeability and otherwise, you can go from 150 m to 250 m and that is it. You are not going to damage the Earth over it. Have our guests done all of those types of studies to prove-----