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Should the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) de-designate Lough Funshinagh in Co Roscommon from its current status as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), a legal route could be opened to ensure that works resume on flood relief infrastructure in the area.
Numerous TDs and senators at a public meeting of over 300 farmers and members of the community claimed that this course of action could be taken, as the lake continues to grow from its previous 600ac size in 2016 to over 1,300 acres today, flooding farmland, submerging sheds and rendering land ineligible for payments under Department of Agriculture schemes.
Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway Michael Fitzmaurice said that de-designation is a process which could take up to three years, as ecological assessments would have be commissioned on the lake.
“Yeah, de-designation is a thing that could be done because the trees are dying as was shown in the presentation,” the TD said.
“If you go through that process, because we have done it with bogs, it’s a two-and-a-half to three-year process. It’s not going to be tomorrow, or next week, or six months’ time.”
Speeding up
The farmers in attendance urged the five sitting Oireachtas members speaking on the panel to examine whether the planning requirements for the semi-constructed injuncted pipeline (to drain the floodwaters) could be fast-tracked or whether this could be the case for any de-designation assessments.
This led to diverging views among the panellists on the supremacy of EU law over Irish law, with many of the local councillors claiming decision-making power had been “ceded” to EU institutions.
Speaking on whether such assessments could be sped up, Fitzmaurice stated that any legal challenge arising from such moves would require every necessary assessment to be completed in full and that despite politicians’ wishes on the status of the lake, “the court system is the court system”.
Local farm adviser James Kelly told the meeting that farmers had been facing serious financial difficulties arising from their inability to farm normally as more and more land went under water.
Retrospective payments for land left ineligible for schemes should be considered, Kelly argued, stating that farmer concerns had not been sufficiently addressed by the Department of Agriculture over the “difficult” years they faced. “It has caused enormous hardship with regards to the loss of entitlements, the loss of agricultural land, the loss of value of land,” the farm adviser said.
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