Una Duggan

Well, what we did, Philip, was we produced and published in 2015 a map for terrestrial avian sensitivity to onshore wind.

So what that did was identify areas of low, medium and high sensitivity of wind firms to wind.

birds in known locations.

So we mapped the distribution of the birds and then assessed their ecology as to how are they affected by the different activities that come with construction and operation of a wind farm.

Well, what we did then was say, right, hooper swans do this here, but how do they interact with wind farms?

So not all birds are impacted by wind farms in the same way.

It can be different impacts or there can be no impacts.

So it really depends.

You have to look at the ecology of the species.

so it's quite you know a detailed process so we it took us a few years to do this um and it was the first time it was done in ireland but it's been done all over europe um and it is recommended by the european commission to do sensitivity mapping especially with wind but it could also be done with forestry and other others so what happened was we published the plan we rolled it out to all the local authorities on their gis their their computer systems to look at um at different areas

And we tried to encourage the Department of the Environment to include this in requirements for where, you know, to just make sure that wind farm developers and those involved are informed.

And no, they didn't.

So they did not include it.

And so what we had was an opportunity where we showed that these are important areas.

These are areas of medium, low, high sensitivity for birds.

We do, but we need more than that, Philip.

When you're talking about speeding things up, we need a lot more data.

I know people say there's enough data, but we actually need to have the data collated in one place in a national repository where people can access it and research it.

There's surveys going on all around the country and not everybody has access to that data.

We need ecologists in all the local authorities and at every section of regulatory planning.