We are in real trouble with Europe on the ecological front, according to a report by Jackie Hunt in the current issue of Wings, the quarterly journal of the IWC or BirdWatch Ireland. Bad enough when visiting, well-disposed tourists give off about our carelessness with rubbish, the detritus of fast-food clients, but this deals with the land itself, our own misuse of the native soil. The devastation of upland ecosystems in the west of this country through overstocking with sheep has long been seen as a great blot on our record. The report calls it "the most negative environmental consequence of Ireland's membership of the European Community." Next comes State-supported "reclamation" of limestone pavement in the Burren. Then there's conifer afforestation and mechanical harvesting of peat from bogs which are protected for nature conservation, and, says Wings magazine "it becomes clear that our environmental legislation lacks teeth."
But it's our country, isn't it? We can surely be trusted to look after our own land and landscape, can't we? Well no, not entirely. The European Commission is taking a case against us in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg for our failure to correctly transpose the EU directive on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) into our domestic law. We, or our Government, are allowed to decide what size of an operation will require an environmental impact assessment, but the Commission takes the view that Ireland has abused that discretion by setting too liberal thresholds, and by ignoring the cumulative effect of many small projects in adjoining areas. So we're in court. And the Advocate General of the Luxembourg court, Antonio La Pergola, found that our legislation did not conform with the EIA directive. He accepted the Commission's evidence of severe damage to natural ecosystems in the Western uplands, in the Burren and on afforestation and peat extraction. Some 60,000 hectares are damaged by sheep-farming, even in areas designated Natural Heritage Areas. Unmonitored afforestation, he said, was having potentially irreversible impacts on uplands and riverways.
If the full court upholds La Pergola's opinion (as is usual, says this report), Ireland will have to pull up its socks and look after its lovely, and tourist-drawing countryside and do what it is told by the EU. The court's decision is expected by the summer. Y