South Dublin Branch News

Tne Very Best of Quote of the Week

This will push the clock back to the period before the National Monuments Act, back before the 1930's. - Dr. Sean Duffy TCD on the National Monuments (Amendments) Bill, quoted in the Irish Times 19 June 2004. What's happening before our very eyes is that Martin Cullen is actively dismantling Ireland's planning and environmental infrastructure. - A planner quoted by Frank McDonald, the Irish Times 24 April 2004.

.. the only Taoiseach - Charles Haughey - who ever gave a toss for the island's natural heritage. - Michael Viney "Another Life" The Irish Times 3 April 2004.

.. the original kingfisher probably arrived on these shores in a bunch of Fyffes' bananas. - Kevin Myers "An Irishman's Diary" Irish Times 1 April 2004, bemoaning the scarcity of Goldfinches, a "native" exotic, in Co. Kildare. The National Association of Regional Game Councils believes that it has a right to pursue its sport on State lands, as applies to other interest groups such as bird-watchers and hill-walkers who make no payment to the State. - Des Crofton, NARGC 29 March 2004 When the Taoiseach loftily dismisses all infidels to the great god of motorways as "swans, snails and people hanging out of trees" he gives voice to a deep contempt for anything that can't be measured in tonnes of concrete and loads of money. - Fintan O'Toole "Bulldozing history and landscape" Irish Times 16 March 2004.

Nowhere in the world has a conventional power station been closed as a result of the development of a wind farm. - David Bellamy quoted in the Irish Times 6 March 2004.

Last week, in another example of the natural talent for stand-up comedy that has been such a source of pleasure in recent Irish culture, Pat "The Cope" Gallagher, Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, told the European Parliament in Brussels that "the environment is a key priority during the Irish Presidency of the EU over the next six months". Speaking of the need for sustainable development, he stressed that "we are committed to growth and social progress throughout the enlarged Community, decoupled from environmental damage". - Fintan O'Toole "Tearing up lessons on planning" Irish Times 13 Jan 2004. What's happening is scary. It's not based on science or reason, but on craven populism with an eye to the local elections in June." - Tony Lowes, Friends of the Irish Environment, quoted in The Irish Times, 10 Jan 2004. .. the Green Party leader announced that for the first time in six years, the corncrake had been heard in Drumcree. News that made Bertie Ahern blush with pride ... and as he stood there, under a halo, it struck observers that when they finally add his portrait to the walls of Leinster House, he will be painted like St. Francis, with a bird in one hand, and a horse eating oats out of the other. - Frank McNally's "Dáil Sketch", The Irish Times, 20 Nov 2003. The Taoiseach has the gall to blame the presence of swans for creating the opposition to the bridge at the Malahide estuary. Does he not agree that his neck is much tougher than that of any swan, given that Ray Burke and his Fianna Fáil cronies rezoned the original road line for that development. - Trevor Sargent, Green Party leader 15 October 2003. Heritage is becoming more marginalised and packaged as a tourism product or something to do on a Sunday afternoon, while other individuals get on with the business of development. - Ian Lumley, heritage officer of An Taisce on Heritage Week, September 6th to 14th. He said that while the Madrid metro was built in three years, a similar project in Ireland had to "go through eight hoops, through all environmental, planning and blah blah blah, and every blah costs a few hundred million." - Taoiseach Bertie Ahern quoted in The Irish Times 21.06.2003 "Trust Dave to have found an unpopular cause .." The Phoenix "The land Coillte Teo is now selling for development was given to them by the State in 1988 to ensure that our woodlands were run commercially, not to enable them to sell the family silver to service bank loans". - Friends of the Irish Environment, 28.04.2003 "I've extreme concerns about the U-turn that Dúchas appear to have done," - Cllr Deirdre de Burca of the Green Party, after Dúchas changed its recommendation from a 73 acre buffer zone, which excluded extraction work, to a 36 acre buffer zone around Glen Ding Wood. The Irish Times 07.04.2003 .. and the mood of the day was set by the Taoiseach's recommendation that the Dáil ratify Ireland's membership of the "Agreement for the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Birdlife". The motion was duly passed, guaranteeing overflight facilities and other rights. Then the birdman of Drumcondra moved sideways on the fence, to make room for new friends. - Frank McNally in Dáil Sketch The Irish Times 19.02.2003

It's not known whether the Taoiseach has a view on the hen harrier, and if he does he probably wouldn't let on. In Dáil discussions on Iraq he has managed to hold a hawk in one hand and a dove in the other, so far without incident. - Frank McNally in Dáil Sketch The Irish Times 20.02.2003 Hearing Bertie Ahern tackle a phrase such as "conservation of African-Eurasian migratory waterbirds" is like watching an erratic show-jumper approach a triple-combination in slippery conditions at the RDS. - Frank McNally in Dáil Sketch, The Irish Times 5.02.2003

All the experts are saying all of this is the greenhouse gases having an effect on the ozone layer and it's causing major changes in weather. - Martin Cullen Minister for the Environment, quoted by Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times 5.02.2003 .. if only all golfers were like this, ovaried or otherwise, in no time at all golf-courts, or whatever they're called, would be so clogged up that the sport would be abandoned, and vast tracts of the countryside would once again be returned to civilisation. - Kevin Myers The Irish Times 13.12.2002 The images of coastal and rural landscapes being used to market Ireland are increasingly divorced from reality. - Ian Lumley An Táisce, The Irish Times 23.11.2002 Without such pressures and controls (of the EU Commission), with conservation initiatives left to the approval of the Dail, how much of our island would now be safe from rape? - Michael Viney The Irish Times 26.10.2002 new plastic (wine) corks .. threaten the future of great tracts of Spanish and Portuguese hill country where farming and wildlife have flourished together for centuries. .. habitats more diverse in plants, birds and animals than any other kind of European farmland, and continues to shelter rare eagles and the last Iberian lynx. - Michael Viney The Irish Times 21.09.2002 Although the fight to protect Dublin Bay is not by any means over, at least the future of one of the city's most valuable public resources will now be decided in the open and by the public. - Councillor Gerry Breen, chairman of Dublin Bay Watch, on the decision by the Department of the Marine that Planning Permission is required for the port's proposed 52 acre infill. The Irish Times, 09.09.2002. Dublin Bay Watch .. also questions the redrawing by Duchas, the Heritage Service, of a Special Protection Area (SPA) for birds excluding the proposed infill (of 52 acres) after meetings with the port company in 1999 - a matter now being investigated by the European Commission. - Frank McDonald - "Group opposes plan to extend Dublin Port" in the Irish Times 21.05.2002. If "commitments" are so nebulous in the manifestos, how much less stringent are they likely to be when watered down in the practical politics of the legislative process and the vagaries of our lackadaisical national enforcement ethos? - An Taisce commenting on the party manifestos on offer 16.05.2002 IWT research shows that 70% of planning applications within SACs are successful. Only one quarter of all planning applications within SACs are looked at by Dúchas. Duchas object to 8% of planning applications. - Irish Wildlife Trust http://www.iwt.ie

While landowners and politicians are prepared to accept EU grant assistance and national assistance for their farming practices, they appear unwilling to accept EU planning regulations. - Ian Lumley, An Taisce's environmental officer, the Irish Times 11.04.2002

The EU's Habitats and Wildlife Directives which have proved so controversial in the west should be renegotiated, according to the Minister for the Marine Mr. Fahey. The current system relating to enviromentally sensitive areas is "too restrictive" and is causing "huge delays in Planning" Duchas had apparently intervened over the use of a quarry in a SAC to provide infill for a harbour in Rossaveal. Mr. Fahey said Duchas had now agreed to exclude the quarry from the SAC area. - Lorna Siggins the Irish Times 04/03/2002 "Loved the soltice .. .. hated the visitor's centre" - New Scientist I note with misery that Clare County Council has given itself permission to build a multi- million euro tourist processing plant at the modest spectacle provided by nature herself - the short stretch of not-very-high cliffs at the Cliffs of Moher. - Nuala O'Faolain the Irish Times 02/02/2002 There are few more sad sights than to see an Irish bog, stripped of all its vegetation, being milled and put into sacks to be used to make soil for golf courses in middle-eastern deserts. - Flora Hibernica by Jonathan Pilcher and Valerie Hall. The Collins Press, Cork, 2001.

It (Bord Pleanala) is undermining the ability of elected members to decide their own planning policies. And we cannot have that. - Eamon O'Cuiv the junior minister with responsibility for rural development calling for debate on the role of Bord Pleanala. 03/11/2001

The theft of economic power and Earth's natural assets (among them, clean seas and air) by a globalising, free-market capitalism impinges on everyone's ideals, whether on environmental issues or social equity. - Michael Viney in Another Life in the Irish Times, 18.08.2001 The top scientists in Europe, independent of politics or industry, will vet GMOs to make sure there is no risk to your health, the health of animals or to the environment. - David Byrne, EU Food Safety Commissioner, the Irish Independent 25.07.2001 ... the government has been selling off the family silver with all the incoherent abandon of an idiot heir with a big cocaine habit to feed. ... Coillte's guardianship of a crucial part of the environment compromised by the policy of fattening the company up for privatisation. - Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times 10.07.2001 "Pity they don't clone some trees .. " - New Scientist