Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senator Scanlon for raising this issue. The European Communities (Natural Habitats) Regulations 1997, which transposed the EU habitats directive into Irish law, is the statutory instrument under which special areas of conservation, SACs, are designated and afforded protection. These sites have legal protection from the date they are publicly notified for designation to landowners and other persons concerned. The sites which have been submitted to the European Commission as candidate SACs have not yet been adopted by the Commission and so cannot yet be legally registered as such.

A key question in the particular case outlined by the Senator is the length of time the land had been owned by the individual concerned – whether he had owned it for quite some time or acquired it more recently and the state of progress in the designation process.