Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to contribute on behalf of farmers and landowners throughout County Kerry on this very important issue. We have been hurt by designations before and no proper compensation was given to farmers. I have said previously in Dáil Éireann that it is a terrible thing when a farmer's house is broken into, perhaps when he or she is at mass, and money and possessions taken. Elderly farmers have been beaten in their homes and had their goods and money stolen. Something similar happens when the Government or the EU decides to designate a whole farm and perhaps the adjoining farms. I have nothing against the hen harrier or anything like that, but when farms were designated to protect hen harriers, the farmers in question were robbed in broad daylight. I call it daylight robbery to do that without giving proper compensation. The farmers had to fight and agitate to get some small amount of compensation. To give the Minister of State an idea of what people in rural areas are dealing with, there are places around Brosna where Coillte and other forestry owners planted forestry but, when it came to the next-door neighbour applying to plant, he or she was refused because the land was designated for the hen harrier. It is daylight robbery and it is very unfair.

I spoke in the House some days ago about a farm of 365 acres in Kerry that was designated as an SAC. The son of the family wanted to build a house on the farm. Kerry County Council, in its wisdom, said that although the whole 365 acres were designated as an SAC, the young fellow deserved to build a house and it granted him planning permission. His father had died and he wanted to live alongside his mother because she was not able to drive. Lo and behold, An Taisce appealed the council's decision to An Bord Pleanála and the young fellow lost the permission that was granted by Kerry County Council. The council had gone through everything and decided there was no harm in the world, only good, in granting the permission. However, the appeal was approved and the woman finished up on her own, with people having to collect her to take her places and then take her home again. It was not fair or right that she lived out the last few years of her life on her own.

I am very worried about these designations. We have been told that more than 30% of the land in the country could be designated as SACs and that the land that was previously designated as SACs could never be touched, farmed in any fashion or have anything else done with it. What kind of robbery is that? It is pure robbery to contemplate doing such a thing. It is being done following agitation by the Green Party and its counterparts in Europe. They are at the back of this, trying to paralyse and finish farmers forever and return farming to what it was after the Ice Age. We have to think of people first. We must think of the small families that keep the light shining in the valley and keep the place alive. If we do not have people, there is no life. We all support wildlife and everything but-----

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