A "STAGGERING" 80 per cent to 90 per cent of Ireland's blanket and raised bogs have been degraded or destroyed, the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht said. "This represents not just significant destruction of our national heritage and, indeed, the European heritage, but it also constitutes a significant destruction of the global natural resource," Mr Higgins added.
The Minister was speaking during a debate on a motion welcoming the publication of the regulations for the designation of special areas of conservation.
The Fianna Fail spokeswoman, Ms Sile de Valera, criticised the Environment Correspondent of The Irish Times (Mr Frank McDonald), who, she said, "has painted farmers as being happy to be cheque in the post merchants and has shown a distinct intolerance of their concerns."
She said that in one particular article last January, he had written that farmers saw NHAs (natural heritage areas) and other nature protection measures as an interference with their rights to do what they liked with their land. She believed the comment was rather patronising and very simplistic.
She asked "why should farmers not protect their own rights? Why shouldn't they negotiate the best deal possible? They hardly need to be apologetic to The Irish Times for their existence."
