Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is correct. We should first recognise that we are lucky in this country to have a largely unspoilt countryside and, because the Industrial Revolution passed us by, we retained areas of high natural amenity and of high natural importance in habitats. The second element we must recognise is that all Irish land is farmed and all the rivers were fished. Traditionally, most of the rivers were cleaned, and particularly, if I might say so, there was not a farmer in Ireland when land was scarce who did not clean the drains within his or her farm. We have good farming practice to thank for the fact so much of our natural habitats survived into the second half of the previous century where in other countries that did not happen.

The other element that we must recognise as being unique is our settlement pattern. Most of us know from travelling on the Continent that the people tend to live in close settlements whereas we tend to live on the land that was farmed. It is a strange sight, certainly to me, to go for miles in countries, such as France and Spain, and suddenly see a town where all the farmers are living rather than our much more developed system of living where the cattle are.

Part of that might be that if a farmer was engaged mainly in crop production, there was not the same need to live beside the animals, but if he was milking one or two cows, he would not want the cows to be in a field three miles away. Unfortunately, the European approach with respect to designations often did not have the necessary finesse to deal with the Irish situation. It is a crude instrument in many ways and sometimes I wonder if it is doing more harm than good. I do not know too many farmers who, if it was left to themselves, would not recognise the ecological importance of their own land. To say that farmers did not always care for wildlife would be wrong. The introduction of more advanced farming systems has done the big damage to song birds and so on. That did not happen with traditional farming.

I was on Inis Turbot Island last year with an islander, a lady who grew up on the island. Inis Turbot is a small island off Clifden and I had heard that the corncrake had returned to it. The fascinating aspect of the lesson on the corncrake is that it will not survive where the grass is not cut. If the land is let go wild, the corncrake will not survive. The grass has to be cut but the trick is to cut it at the right time. That lady explained to me that when her father used to cut the meadow in the old days, he always made it his business not to interfere with the corncrakes. To think that people in the past did not value the habitats in which they lived as much as the greatest ecologists of today is to misunderstand totally the incredible traditional relationship between traditional farmers and the land they farmed.

These designations eventually became Irish law in 1997, having been signed into an EU directive prior to that. I am talking about special areas of conservation, SACs, in the first instance. Síle de Valera, who was then my senior Minister, came into the Department in 1997 after that was signed and she and I took a unilateral decision to take out all of the commercial cutters and compensate them because, for them, turf cutting was a business. We left the domestic cutters because it more than a business for them. The Minister used the word "cultural" and I might use the word "traditional". For the domestic cutters, it was not only a source of free fuel, but a way of life, and it was a type of fuel they liked. They liked the ambience it created, it was one with which they were familiar and it was part of their life. In doing that, we got rid of 96% of the effort at that time, or so we were told by the Department and I have no doubt that it had the correct figures. The domestic cutters at the time comprised only 4%. I stress for the record that we did not get a derogation from Europe, rather we gave a derogation. The then Minister, Síle de Valera, and I went to Europe and I remember the meeting well. We looked the officials in the eye and told them that we intended to tell the individual domestic bog cutters that they could continue cutting turf for ten years, to which they replied: "We hear you, Minister." We took that to mean, and we were proven right in hindsight, that they were not going to take us to court within that ten-year period if we took out the 96% commercial element. That is how it happened.

I welcome this Bill for many reasons. I congratulate Deputy Fitzmaurice who fought a long campaign over this issue. It is interesting sometimes how creativity comes into play when one is told something cannot happen. If I understand it correctly, the nub of what the Minister proposes is to dedesignate some natural heritage areas, NHAs - I stress these are NHAs and she might clarify if any parts of SACs are involved at any stage - and redesignate other lands to be NHAs as compensation. Therefore, she will make the case to Europe that there will be more conservation after this process is completed than there was prior to it. It is a pity this was not done ten years ago. Sometimes things take time and they take negotiation. I congratulate Deputy Fitzmaurice not only for standing his ground, but for reaching a solution with the Department. Standing his ground without getting a solution would not have served anybody well.

My understanding from a quick perusal of the Bill, and we can go into this further on Committee Stage, is that it is a general enabling one. Under it, the Minister will be able to relook at all NHAs in the country under certain criteria and identify if they are of major conservation value or if there are other places with a higher conservation value. It does not seem that there is a requirement in the legislation for compensation in terms of compensatory NHAs. It seems to provide the Minister could withdraw a designation if she decided it did not serve any major ecological or conservation issue and that there is not a legal obligation to compensate. I made have read the Bill too quickly and I will read it in much more detail when we come to deal with Committee Stage, by which time I will have read every subparagraph. I did not see a provision in it that specifically states that if a NHA is dedesignated, some other designation must be inserted. I stand to be corrected on that but that is what I have taken from it. It is quite a short Bill.

When the Minister is finished dealing with the specific bogs listed in the Bill, and it is quite a long list, we do not yet know what she will put back in but I hope they will not cause any controversy. Many of them are on public lands but I understand some of them are not. I hope the ones that are not on public lands will not create a new hornet's nest and it will not be a case of she stepped out and they stepped in again and we find that all we have done is transferred the row. I trust the Minister and her officials have looked after that angle.

There is a wider issue. As the Minister knows, some of the most eco-sensitive farmers in the country are getting to the point where they are very against designations. They are not against the ecology but they are against the way the designations are being used to halt all rural life in certain areas. Unfortunately, I live in the area with the most designated land - 80% of the land west of the Corrib is designated. Extending north between the Tourmakeady Mountains and the sea, I understand that 80% of the land between Leenane and Westport is also designated. We get into farcical situations, part of which, I accept, is due to planning law brought in during my time in office, not when I was Minister for the Environment but when I was a Minister. We can talk about unintended consequences and we are trying to watch every element. I see the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, is laughing, but I am sure he spends a good deal of time late at night reading small items of legislation and trying to check that nothing is going through any Department that he has not proofed down to the last degree for unintended consequences. I used to do a great deal of that and I would not say that I caught every pinkeen in fish of the provisions in Bills.

In all the legislation on this area, it is provided that if one is building a house within 15 km of an SAC, one has to carry out a screening operation. It is farcical the way this requirement is applied in places. I will cite the example of an area where a mountain has been designated as an SAC and the house in question is in the valley. In my part of the country, the water flows downhill. We have not yet found a trick to get it to flow uphill, although there was a road in County Louth that I was shown by a council one time where a car rolled up the road. The Deputy might know about that road in County Louth.

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