Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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186. To ask the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht why she is proposing to de-designate 46 raised bog natural heritage areas, given the importance of protecting and restoring peatlands, including raised bogs for protecting biodiversity, for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, and for preventing and mitigating flooding, in a highly cost-effective fashion, as demonstrated by the Environmental Protection Agency funded Bogland project, leading to large-scale peatland restoration projects in other countries in European Union and further afield. [20157/16]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Review of Raised Bog Natural Heritage Area Networkwas published in January 2014. It sets out a series of measures to ensure that Ireland meets its obligations under the EU Habitats Directive to maintain or restore raised bog habitat to favourable conservation status, as well as its obligations under the EU Environmental Impact Assessment Directive relating to the regulation of turf cutting on natural heritage areas, whilst at the same time avoiding unnecessary impacts on the traditional rights of landowners and users and minimising the cost to the State of compensation payments.

The review concluded that Ireland could more effectively achieve conservation of threatened raised bog habitat through focused protection and restoration of a reconfigured network. This will entail:

- The phasing out by 1 January 2017 of turf-cutting on 36 existing natural heritage areas, which will remain designated - this includes 7 sites to be divided, with part to be conserved and part de-designated;

- The complete de-designation of 46 natural heritage areas - including the relevant areas of the 7 sites to be divided - where it has been judged that their contribution to the attainment of the national conservation objective for raised bog is expected to be marginal and/or restoration would be prohibitively expensive for the conservation benefits achieved. Domestic turf-cutting may continue on these sites, while larger scale or commercial turf cutting will continue to be regulated through other consent systems; and

- The designation as natural heritage areas of 25 currently undesignated raised bogs, which are in public ownership or where there is reduced turf cutting pressure, so as to compensate for the loss of habitat within the sites where it is proposed that turf cutting can be allowed to continue.

The review clearly sets out that the newly configured network will have considerable advantages over the current natural heritage area network. While the review proposes the de-designation of a number of natural heritage areas, this will be more than balanced by the proposed designation of new natural heritage areas.

The Programme for a Partnership Governmentincludes a commitment to publish the new legislation to de-designate the natural heritage areas in question within the first 100 days of Government. The drafting of this legislation has now been approved and the General Scheme of the Bill has been referred for consideration by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Regional Development, Rural Affairs, Arts and the Gaeltacht.