The Government is reluctant to impose an EU-wide ban on the trade in limestone paving where the stone is used for rock gardens. This is despite the risk to the Burren resource and pressure from Britain where similar sites have been damaged.
Although the Burren is the largest area of limestone pavement in western Europe and is protected as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), it is being damaged. Some of this is a legal trade because certain areas are outside the SAC boundaries and small-scale extraction does not require planning permission.
But "some stone is being illegally removed from protected areas which have been protected expressly because they contain some of the finest examples of this unique habitat," according to the British statutory body, Countryside Agency.
Limestone pavement distribution in the State is concentrated in Galway, Mayo, Limerick and the Burren. Exports to Britain now amount to about 9,000 tonnes annually; the indigenous trade was restricted there in the late 1990s.
More than a year after a report, On Stony Ground, found that up to four of 10 limestone sites in the State could be illegal, the Government has failed to draft a response. The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, and the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms de Valera, have responsibility in the area.
"We would like to try and resolve this one. We feel a bit guilty. We have exported our problem by cracking down in Britain," Mr Richard Lloyd, a member of the Countryside Agency and chairman of the Limestone Pavement Biodiversity Action Plan Working Group, said.
The British Minister for the Environment, Mr Michael Meacher, has responded to Mr Lloyd's call for an EU-wide trade ban, saying that while he sympathised with the idea, he intended taking up the issue with his counterpart, the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey.
Mr Lloyd told Mr Meacher that "the current view of the Irish authorities on legal extraction of stone in Ireland makes the achievement of such a ban unlikely" and went on to say he was told by Department of Arts, Culture, Gaeltacht and the Islands officials that "there is some extraction of stone which is perfectly legal".
But the Countryside Agency has noted that "protecting limestone pavement will always be difficult when there is a legal trade behind which illegal trade can take place".
Together with Duchas the agency funded the On Stony Ground report. It found that of 10 key limestone sites in the Republic, two were illegal, two were possibly illegal and two were on the borders of protected areas. While 9,000 tonnes of limestone was officially received by British importers, less than half that was registered by official Irish exporters, indicating that much of the remainder is illegally extracted.
A spokesman for the Department of Arts Heritage Gaeltacht and the Islands, said the situation in Ireland differed from that in Britain. "We have a huge surface of limestone pavement," he said. "Our priority is to ensure that any limestone from designated areas is not extracted. We have initiated a number of prosecutions."
Mr Lloyd now expects a meeting between the relevant ministers of both states to formulate a joint response. "The message coming back is, politically, this would be very difficult. It is commercial interests. It is a source of revenue for a fairly beleaguered farming industry in parts of Ireland."
Mr Michael Starrett, chief executive of Duchas, is awaiting a reply from Ms de Valera. He wrote to her last October, stating that despite the "contentious nature of imposing a full trade ban", he wanted to know what steps had been taken to sustain the resource.
Dr Liam Lysaght of Duchas, who was involved with the action plan working group, said garden-centre owners and landowners needed to be educated on the importance of the Burren as probably "the most important nature conservation area in north-west Europe".
"If we were asking for an all out ban on the trade, it would be over and above what is required by statute. The issue about a trade ban comes within the remit of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment."