Professor Tasman Crowe:

We are going through a process now in this in this mini-project of what is called a sensitivity analysis. In this, we are systematically reviewing all the available evidence that is published and potentially some of the evidence that is not published for each of the features one might wish to conserve. This allows us to look at what knowledge we have of how they are affected by different kinds of activities and the pressures that are associated with them and how quickly they bounce back.

There are some internationally used frameworks for that and we are using one of those frameworks where, based on the evidence that we get, we score whether they have a low, high or medium resistance to a given pressure. For example, given the introduction of nutrients into the water, is this a species that does not notice that at all or is completely disrupted by it, and how quickly could it bounce back if that pressure was removed? The combination of those two things gives us their sensitivity.

We can also score our confidence in that assessment based on the nature of the evidence. We look at how applicable the evidence is to the Irish context, the quality of the evidence and how well all of the different studies agree or disagree, and that gives us a measure of confidence in that assessment. We can then produce a summary table that says that this activity in this place, for these species and habitats, would be extremely detrimental, and we have complete confidence in that conclusion. On the other hand, it could say that it would only be moderately detrimental or that we are not quite sure.

We can stand over that. It is a completely transparent process and everything we did to reach that conclusion is documented, logged and recorded, and anyone can look at it and challenge it. We could set thresholds within a framework like that and say that, clearly, the evidence suggests that this activity is a damaging activity for this feature in this context, and it should be prevented. That is not the same as making the decision but there is a basis there for the decision to be made.