Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I concur with what Deputy Ó Cuív has said. We brought this issue up in the Dáil previously. We had a meeting with Department officials on it and I thank the Minister of State for that. On that day, we were told the Bill was basically going to be brought back or rewritten. There were obstacles but the officials said they had found ways around them and we were going to have it. That was my understanding. It was going to be gone through before the summer recess. I have looked at schedules and maybe I have missed something but I cannot see it there. The Government does not realise the torture this is causing. There are people who want to plant land and cannot because this Bill is held up. There are people who want to build a house and cannot because the very minute a council looks at the application, the area is put down as an NHA and the council walks away. That is what they do. When the forestry service gets something that is in a designated area, it is bye-bye. That is the seriousness of it. With the planting situation at the moment, we have hit 50%. When you have people willing to do things, you need to work with them. I have been involved in all of this down through the years. As Deputy Ó Cuív pointed out, this was not done by ordinary people.

It was ecologists and scientists who went out and checked the different bogs. It is not only bogs. There is one place I know where a person's shed, where the cows are milked, is within it. Those are the facts in County Leitrim, on the border of Roscommon, and it is as fine a field as has ever been seen. It should never have been put in but it was put in and, in fairness, the National Parks and Wildlife Service was going to rectify that. What it did was grade it all, and we were putting away what was not required and was of no use. The service was going to give compensation and so on.

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