An european honey bee. He needs your help.

Bees are probably are most important insect, to the extent that if they vanished, it is estimated that mankind would probably perish within 3-4 years.

The reason for this is simple: as bees jump from plant to plant, they pollinate those plants, causing them to re-produce. Without plants, we have no food, without food, well…

It’s all the more worrying then that our bee population is experiencing ongoing decline. This is a worldwide phenomenon, caused by the spread of new pests, weather changes, and destruction of the countryside.

The Irish Bee Keeping Association have currently launched an initiative to re-introduce 200,000 bees into Ireland. The Department of the Environment has provided for €300k funding to assist in this.

As individuals, we can also help.

Bees love wild flowers, the kind that spring up around your house when you don’t cut your grass for a couple of weeks. If you can leave a small patch of grass around your house uncut, or let a border grow out a bit, you’d be helping to maintain and grow our bee population.

http://www.irishbeekeeping.ie

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A percolation test hole, which tests the ability of the soil to hold a septic tank. We have over 400k septic tanks in Ireland, compared to just 80k in the whole of Scotland.

The 7 members of Fine Gael who recently travelled to Brussels to consult with Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik regarding soil percolation testing in Co. Leitrim appear to be amazed that the Water Frame Directive does not contain prescriptive measures in relation to how soil percolation tests should be carried out in this jurisdiction.

Had they even a cursory knowledge of the application of EU Law, this trip would have been unnecessary, as EU Directives are never prescriptive in this way, and instead establish standards which must be met and time frames in which they must be met.

Moreover, any of the members of the delegation could have simply read the Water Framework Directive, copies of which are available from Leitrim County Council and the EU Commission’s web site.

As things stand, Ireland is in breach of the Water Framework Directive and has been prosecuted by the European Court of Justice as a result. The statutory agency that is responsible for rectifying this situation, and ensuring that Local Authorities meet the standards that are laid out in the Water Framework Directive, is the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Environmental Protection Agency has in turn issued Codes of Practice in relation to testing for water percolation quality, and the Minister for the Environment has instructed County Managers to implement these standards. This has been the norm for Ministers for the Environment in successive Governments, given that it would be absurd for a Minister for the Environment to reject the findings of an agency that has statutory responsibility for water quality.

The current Minister for the Environment has never expressed any view in relation to percolation testing. He is not an engineer or expert in soil science, and must rely on the expertise that is available to him. He has therefore instructed County Managers to adopt the Codes of Practice as published by the EPA.

During his recent visit to Carrigallen, he made it clear to the elected members of Leitrim County Council, including those who recently went to Brussels, that he has no issue with the use of technology to achieve the standards required by the Water Framework Directive, but that this was a matter for the EPA.

As is their want at the moment, Fine Gael has chosen to ignore this, and instead engage in populist ranting about ‘driving people of the land’.

This, sadly, is typical of the quality of debate that attaches to important issues like water quality, and makes you wonder what, if any, environmental standards we would have if these matters were decided by local politicians rather than the EU Commission.

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More on the subject of bottled water.

When are we going to wake up to the lunacy of transporting water around the country (and indeed the world) by truck. Isn’t that what oceans and rivers are for?

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Press Release
The Green Party / Comhaontas Glas – (Sligo/Leitrim/Roscommon Group)
Garreth McDaid Tel.: 087 6885867 Email: info@slrgreens.com
____________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release:

Feb 24 2009

Local Greens welcome decision on Boleybrack

Leitrim Green Party representative, Garreth McDaid, has welcomed the decision of the High Court to prevent Leitrim County Council from carrying out any further works on the protected site on Boleybrack Mountain.

The Council have been ordered by the Court both to cease ongoing works, to take remedial action and to pay the legal costs of the applicants, the Cavan Leitrim Environmental Awareness Network (CLEAN).

Speaking after the decision, Mr. McDaid said the case raises serious questions about the Council’s commitment to preserving natural heritage in the county, and about their knowledge of EU Environmental Law.

“The fact that the Council pursued this case, exposing themselves to costs which will now have to be taken from their already meagre budget, when it was quite clear that they were in breach of numerous instruments of both EU and National Law, raises serious questions about their attitude to environmental protection.”

“At a time when value must be derived from every euro of the Council’s budget, wasting thousands of euro on defending the indefensible cannot be tolerated.”

“The elected members of the Council must also bear their share of responsibility for this fiasco. Rather than insist that the County Manager uphold the law, they repeatedly lobbied for the continuation of the works, which raises serious questions about their competence in the area of EU Law.”

“On the other hand, the members of CLEAN deserve enormous credit for pursuing this matter, particularly when they were subjected to constant vilification by the elected members of Leitrim County Council, and given they huge financial risk that was involved in this case.”

ENDS

More about the Boleybrack Mountain SAC here

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This is a good video that explains how some of the more widely used arguments used to deny Global Warming come to pass, and how they are utterly without foundation.

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The recent call made by elected members of Leitrim County Council for Government assistance in dealing with the county’s vacant housing situation would be comical if it weren’t so serious.

Of the 22 elected members of Leitrim County Council, 17 of them have held their seats for over 10 years, and Of the remaining 5, 2 have held their seats for over 5 years.

As is the case all over the country, these Councillors regualarly disclaim responsibility for their actions by insisting that power at Local Authority level rests with the County Manager and not with them. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of planning law knows that this is complete nonsense.

County Councillors have 2 key powers: they get to set commercials rates, and they get write Development Plans.

A Development Plan is written for every county every 6 years, and serves as the guidebook for planners in their decisions to grant or refuse permission for individual planning applications. If a Development Plan tells a planner that a particular area is zoned for residential development, the planner is required to look favourably on proposals for residential development in that area.

The formulation of Development Plans is a power that rests solely with the elected members of a County Council.

The last 3 Development Plans that have been produced by the elected members of Leitrim County Council have been blueprints for developer led chaos, so much so, that had all the land they zoned for residential development been used for residential development, Leitrim today would have a population of approx. 80,000 people.

What is worse is that even when is was abundantly clear that Leitrim was already oversupplied with housing (the 2002 census showed that approx. 24% of houses in Leitrim were unoccupied on a permanent basis), these same Councillors went ahead a zoned even more land for residential development in the 2002-2008 Development Plan.

In fact, the message still hadn’t sunk in after the 2007 Census (the 2007 census showed that 29% of houses in Leitrim were unoccupied on a permanent basis, although this finding was never actually discussed at a Council meeting), and when the Councillors came to write the 2009-2015 Development, not only did they remove a section inserted by the County Manager that aimed to incentivise use of the existing housing stock, they all included a call on the Minister for Finance to further extend the housing related tax breaks that had contributed to the over supply of housing in the first place.

The madness didn’t end there, however. Leitrim County Councillors also took it upon themselves to silence An Bord Pleanala, the national planning appeals agency, who had on a number of occasions overtuned decisions my by the Council’s planners in relation to specific developments.

In February 2006, after An Bord Pleanala overturned a decision to grant permission for 39 houses in the tiny village of Rossinver, Leitrim County Council voted unanimously for a motion of ‘No Confidence’ in An Bord Pleanala.

Unsurprisingly, nobody paid very much attention to this, so the next time An Bord Pleanala provoked their ire, in May 2008, the Councillors went one step further and voted (unanimoulsy again) to abolish An Bord Pleanala.

This is the sort of childish nonsense that has characterised the execution of perhaps the primary responsibility of elected members of Local Authorities, to provide for sustainable, long term development of communities which they represent.

No independent analysis of what has happened in Leitrim over the last 10 years could conclude that any forethought has gone into the planning of Leitrim’s communities, or that the people who were charged with that responsibility had the faintest idea what they were doing.

Instead, we are left with a huge oversupply of housing, a local construction sector that won’t recover for at least a decade, and an unfinished housing estate problem that will consume the Council’s scarce resources for years to come.

The Councillors recent call for Government assistance is an admission of same.

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