25 April 2006

Environment

Proposed Special Areas of Conservation

Ciarán Cuffe asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government when he expects the proposed special areas of conservation, the majority of which were agreed between the Government and the European Commission in December 2004, to be fully established as special areas of conservation under the habitats directive

Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government (Mr. Roche):

Some 413 of 420 proposed candidate special areas of conservation have already been transmitted to the European Commission. All of these sites enjoy the full protection of the European Union natural habitats regulations from the date that they were first publicly advertised. I expect that the remaining seven sites, along with some additional proposals for marine cold water coral reef candidate special areas of conservation sites, will be transmitted to the Commission during this year.

The conclusion of the designation process involves the making of a statutory instrument for each individual site. In advance of this, my Department is engaged in a process of map validation and where necessary consideration of objections on scientific grounds. The Commission has requested that these statutory instruments should be in place by 2008 and I intend that this deadline will be met.