Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I accept that there is an eternal debate here. On the one hand, we have the concerns of local communities about what are often small areas of land and their designation. Communities may wish to remove small contentious areas of land from the designation because in their view, it will not impact on the overall status of the larger NHA. On the other hand, we need to protect the maximum amount of NHAs and bogland in recognition of the role they play in carbon sequestration, as the Senator rightly pointed out. Functioning peatlands capture or sequester carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the form of peat and vegetation. They have a very important and positive role to play in mitigating climate change by enabling the storage of carbon. A balance must be struck between the need to remove what are, in many cases, very small areas on the one hand and the need to designate what are, in most cases, larger areas. One would not designate an area the size of this Chamber, for example, but one may wish to de-designate an area of that size for some specific purpose or role. The process of de-designation is simpler and the standards would be lower. However, there is still a process that must be gone through which is based on scientific advice. Obviously, we will have a wider debate on section 16(6) of the 2000 Act in the context of some of Senator Higgins's later amendments.