Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It seems to me if this is one of the genuine motivating factors one would expect it to appear as one of the criteria by which regulations would be crafted, but we do not see this. In a spirit of genuine conciliation in this debate it seems to me the Minister should indicate she is open to accepting the introduction of road safety as one of the constraining factors in section 8 if her section 8 is to proceed.

The second point that occurs to me is there is a distinction between section 8(1) which is a burning section and section 8(2) which, at present, is a cutting, grubbing or destroying section, but the Minister now indicates it is purely to be cutting. It is very notable from the wording of section 8(1) it is proposed it should apply to such part or parts of the State as the regulations may permit. When we look to the regulations envisaged by section 8(2) no such geographical criteria are there. If we were considering a genuine pilot study to evaluate whether this should take place on scientific grounds, and bearing in mind the implications for wildlife and flora and fauna, one would expect, even from the point of view of having control studies and the like, that any scientific approach to a pilot study would look at areas where it was permitted and areas where it was not permitted, and see whether there was any significant difference between the two. I was interested that Michael Viney in an article on this subject in The Irish Timespointed out there are particular species which produce second clutches of eggs and chicks in August each year. The beekeepers of Ireland have come forward and their objections are based on the needs of bees with regard to cutting back that year's growth.

This brings me to the next point the Minister mentioned in her contribution. She mentioned the regulations she had in mind would deal with roadside hedge cutting and non-roadside hedge cutting where it was necessary for land management in a tillage context. Why is this not mentioned in the section? I am worried by a particular point in all of this. I do not doubt the Minister's good faith for a minute, but it is all very well to say that cutting would be restricted to that year's growth, whatever that would mean for bees and animals dependent on berries, but if somebody brings a machine into a field and starts cutting, afterwards who will say the person cutting went further than this year's growth? In the real world what inspector will be sent out, and by whom, to crawl along the hedges and state that cutting has gone a bit further than this year's growth and it is 4 inches into last year's growth? Where will the line be drawn? People will not be out with secateurs and measuring tapes. Either a hedge cutting machine will be deployed on a hedge or it will not. In the aftermath, there will be nothing to show how far into last year's growth the cutting actually went. There will be no person whose job it is to state the cutting went further than this year's growth because that person would have to prove he or she was there last year and saw the state of the hedge last year.