Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I listened with interest to what the Minister had to say about this. She informed the House that such burning as will be done in March and such hedge-cutting as will take place in August will be done subject to very strict conditions, but where are the conditions? If one looks at the proposed legislation, it is clear that this House has no input into fixing what the conditions are. If there are no conditions set out, this House will be in a position that it can do nothing to retrieve the situation. I would have thought that the very first thing we should do, bearing in mind what has just been said by the previous speaker, is differentiate between on-road hedges and off-road hedges for starters. The road safety argument only goes so far.As the great majority of hedgerows in Ireland are off-road hedgerows, the road safety arguments that are being made simply do not apply.

Although section 8(1) of the Bill provides for burning in March to be restricted to "such part or parts of the State as specified in the regulations", section 8(2) does not provide for the capacity to limit hedgecutting in August to any part of the State. The implication is that it will apply everywhere. The pilot scheme we are being told about is a Twenty-six Counties pilot scheme. If one's interest was really confined to researching the possibility of hedgecutting in August, it strikes me as odd that one would extend this provision to all Twenty-six Counties with a view to working out what its consequences might be.