Call to protect Ireland’s hedgerows amid ‘enormous’ removal

14 comments
  1. Fucking nuts. The GAA club across from my house routed out around 500m last year in the middle of nesting season and replaced it with a fence they got a grant for. It boils my piss, we have a green party in government who are determined to punish everyday folk rather than offer incentives to live greener but they won’t do anything about environmental vandalism like this.

  2. This a massive issue and I can’t understand why it’s being allowed happen. I was in the UK recently and the countryside is devoid of life due to the absolutely massive fields and zero hedgerows. The rest actually a big campaign there to reinstate them.

    And yet here we are in Ireland actively removing them. Absolutely ridiculous.

  3. Was told about a new rule/law that means ditches, hedges and trees need to be cleared from new builds next to roads. As in, the full length of the property and more for visibility.

    There was a nice slightly winding road in my area with fields on either side. It had hedges, ditches and big old trees lining it. Eventually someone got planning permission to build and had to remove the entire side of the road for something like 200 meters. Ruined the area completely and gives the home owners no privacy. Fucking joke.

  4. Is there a breakdown on how much is removed every year by farmers and by housing?

    Because the only hedges I’ve seen removed around here are around local towns and villages for housing development and there’s no mandate to have to replant an equivalent length elsewhere.

    If farmers want to remove a hedge, they have to plant twice the length before they can remove that hedge or face thousands of euro in penalties. Imagine how quickly the loss of hedges could be turned into gains if the same requirements were imposed on developers.

  5. For all the talk Ireland does about green fields, people actively destroy the countryside. Even the amount of new detached houses that don’t even have a fucking blade of grass in sight around them.

  6. the road safety authority where i am, have a nasty habit of making planning permission subject to hedgerow removal

    any bend or turn in the road at all, “oh you want planning go ask that farmer to sweep 50, 60, 70 metres of hedge out of it”

    a government body making their problems, working class peoples problems during an expensive time in there lives

Leave a Reply