Ireland has “failed to fulfill its obligations” to put necessary conservation measures in place to protect natural habitats, wild fauna and flora, according to an influential legal advisor to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
Ireland is currently defending its position in relation to the “implementation of its obligations” under the European Union Habitats Directive in a case before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
According to the EU, the Habitats Directive “ensures the conservation of a wide range of rare, threatened or endemic animal and plant species”.
The European Commission has taken the legal action against Ireland because it claims that Ireland has failed to “establish the necessary conservation measures” in relation to 423 sites it has identified as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs).
The commission has outlined that Ireland “contains a number of priority habitat types and species which are in danger of disappearance”.
One of these habitat types has been identified as blanket bogs, according to the commission:
“They are extremely important, inter alia, for climate change, as they store millions of tonnes of carbon (peat-forming plants such as sphagnum moss and sedges remove carbon from the atmosphere.”
In its defence, Ireland has argued that “Irish law contains a list of notifiable actions and a list of activities requiring consent (ARCs), which identify activities in respect of which the consent of the relevant minister is required before they can be undertaken at a particular site”.
Because of this, Ireland has argued that “there are no sites of the 423 in question in respect of which there are no site-specific conservation measures” as every site has a list of notifiable actions or a list of ARCs.
Conservation measures
In the latest “opinion” document published on the case Tamara Capeta, advocate general to the CJEU, “Ireland has not refuted the commission’s allegation that a number of sites lack any conservation measures”.
She has proposed that the CJEU “declare that Ireland has failed to fulfil its obligations” – under Article 6(1) of Council Directive 92/43/EEC – “on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora, by failing to establish the necessary conservation measures”.
The opinion by Capeta will be viewed as a set back for Ireland which has requested that the CJEU dismiss the court action “in its entirety as unfounded”.
Capeta, in her opinion document, cited a number of examples where she said Ireland had not undertaken conservation measures which were “sufficiently detailed” or did not address all of the threats and pressures for the habitats and species on each site.
She pointed to the examples of:
- Kilgarvan Ice House SAC which is host to one species (the lesser horseshoe bat);
- Slieve Bloom Mountains SAC which is host to one priority habitat type (blanket bogs) and two additional habitat types (Northern Atlantic wet heaths with Erica tetralix and alluvial forests with Alnus glutinosa and Fraxinus excelsior);
- Carrownagappul Bog SAC which is host to one priority habitat type (active raised bogs) and two additional habitat types (degraded raised bogs still capable of natural regeneration and depressions on peat substrates of the Rhynchosporion);
- Old domestic building (Keevagh) SAC which is designated for the protection of the lesser horseshoe bat species.