Councillor warns on SAC conditions
COUNCILLOR Norma Moriarty has warned that restrictions farmers will face once Special Areas of Conservation [SACs] designations are formalised could drive people from farming.
The Fianna Fáil Councillor was speaking at a South and West Kerry Municipal District meeting in Kenmare on Friday, and she called on the local authority to write to Ministers Josepha Madigan and Michael Creed to seek a workable solution.
“In 1997, there were some 2.2million acres in Ireland designated as SACs (Special Areas of Conservation),” she explained.
“The process of formalising that is now coming to a conclusion and people have been written to with maps outlining where the SACs are. But there are also areas boxed off around those.
“As well, there are ARCs, Activities Requiring Consent, 37 of them, that farmers [in those designated areas] would have to comply with...if you want to fertilise your land next to a river, 20 metres from the shoreline, you cannot touch that without a permit from National Parks and Wildlife (NPWS). You might be farming all your life, you might have your green cert and everything…and [fertilising] that’s just one of these ARCs.”
The councillor said farmers will probably be asked by the NPWS to carry out an Environmental Impact Survey for activities such as fertilising, which she explained would cost around €1,000.
She also said farmers in REPS will be treated differently.
“The one who’s in REPS is fine, they can farm away in the usual, responsible manner… because they have a farm management plan which outlines their normal farming practices. But their neighbour, who farms in exactly the same way, with the same methods, is not to be trusted because they’re not in REPS.
“Whatever few people are left farming...this is going to drive them out.
“There is a solution: allow those people to get someone to put together a farm-management plan and not have to go back and ask for permission. But they [the Departments] are not inclined to listen to that”.
Her party colleague, Councillor Michael O’Shea, praised the motion and called for the issue to be raised elsewhere.
“That’s a very good motion,” he said. “That has to be brought up at a full county meeting. It has to be done for the whole county.”