Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Question 144: To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the number of the objections made by landowners to the proposed inclusion of land in the special protection areas in County Donegal that were accepted, excluding the proposed land from an SPA area; and the number of individual one-to-one consultations or meetings with landowners that were held before these decisions were made. [5963/12]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Question 145: To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the number of the objections made by landowners to the proposed inclusion of land in special protection areas in County Mayo were that accepted, excluding the proposed land from an SPA area; and the number of individual one-to-one consultations or meetings with landowners that were held before these decisions were made. [5964/12]

Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry North-West Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 144 and 145 together.

For the purposes of this reply, I am referring to the most recent proposed Special Protection Areas put forward by my Department in Donegal and Mayo, that is, those proposed for designation in 2011.

In Donegal, some 260 valid informal, or Stage 1, objections were received from landowners and others concerning the proposed Special Protection Areas for the corncrake in the county. Sixteen objections were submitted in relation to proposed Special Protection Areas in Mayo.

Decisions have yet to be made on the majority of these objections. However, no objection has been deemed to be successful to date.

Staff from my Department have attended a number of public meetings in relation to these designations, and would have met many individual landowners to explain the designation process and to answer questions. However, my Department does not compile statistics on the numbers of such meetings held.