EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Ireland’s Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020 Irish institutes and researchers are involved in two large projects funded by the INTERREG Atlantic Area funding programme. Clean Atlantic 34 is a project focused on gathering and assessing data, knowledge and gaps relating to marine litter in the Atlantic area. Ocean Wise 35 is aimed at developing long-term measures to reduce the impact of polystyrene, the most common item found in beach surveys, in the North-East Atlantic. Additional information on land-based initiatives can be found in Chapter 14. Marine Communities, SPAs, SACs and MPAs The expansion of MPAs for Ireland’s coastal and marine ecosystems is an ongoing process. Ireland’s third National Biodiversity Action Plan 2017- 2021 36 has been developed to protect and enhance Ireland’s biodiversity. Objective 5 of the plan aims to ‘conserve and restore biodiversity and ecosystem services in the marine environment’. The full implementation of the MSFD, WFD, Habitats and Birds Directives and revised CFP is considered the conduit for achieving this objective. In Ireland, the Habitats Directive is currently the only legislative instrument providing protection to habitats in the marine environment, through the designation of SACs. These have been chosen to represent a sample of important habitats and species populations under Annex I and Annex II of the Directive, respectively. Ireland is committed to maintaining or restoring the protected habitats and species within these sites to ‘favourable conservation status’. INFOMAR (Section 3.1) provided a platform for the designation of seven new marine SACs, which were proposed in 2012 and 2015. Special Protection Areas are designated under the Birds Directive for the protection of particular species or communities of birds and/or wetland areas that provide essential resources for resident or migrating birds. These are either intertidal or coastal areas and are mainly coincident in their boundary with SACs (Figure 8.9). Under the OSPAR Convention, Ireland has 19 MPAs, which cover 4135 square kilometres. All of Ireland’s OSPAR sites are also either SACs or SPAs and so currently they do not have any legal protection outside that associated with their SAC designation. 34 http://www.cleanatlantic.eu/packages/ 35 https://ocean.org/ 36 https://www.npws.ie/legislation/national-biodiversity-plan A European network of important ecological sites, the Natura 2000 network of SACs and SPAs, is managed through the development of site-specific conservation objectives (SSCOs) (see Chapter 6 for further details). The NPWS is delivering a programme of work to finalise the SSCOs for all SPAs and SACs. Generic conservation objectives are in place for those sites that remain without SSCOs. Ensuring that the current and future SACs and SPAs are properly managed and supported as a network was highlighted in Ireland’s 6th National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity (DCHG, 2019). This would serve to increase resilience in the face of anthropogenic pressures. The need to protect marine mammals such as harbour porpoises, dolphins and seals from active acoustic surveys has been recognised through the restriction of these activities in 24 SACs. This includes the Lower River Shannon SAC and its resident bottlenose dolphin population, and Lambay Island SAC and its population of grey and common seals. It is an offence to carry out the specified activity within the 24 SACs without the consent of the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. 37 Ireland is committed to the Convention on Biological Diversity and adopted target 11, that 10 per cent of all coastal and marine areas are conserved through well- connected systems of protected areas, in 2010 (Aichi target 11, SDG 14.5). The EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 has committed to a minimum of 30 per cent protection of EU’s Sea areas, with strict protection for a third of these areas (EU, 2020). Currently, only 2.1 per cent of our marine areas are protected. The MSFD recognises that one measure for achieving Good Environmental Status is the establishment of a representative and coherent network of MPAs to preserve marine biodiversity 38 . In general terms MPAs are identifiable coastal/marine areas that, among other features, are considered to be of particular importance for ecosystem functioning, natural ecology and biological diversity. In Ireland there is currently no legal definition of the term Marine Protected Area however, nor specific stand-alone legislation underpinning the designation or management of such sites. 37 Further information on activities requiring consent (ARCs) is available at https://www.npws.ie/farmers-and-landowners/activities-requiring- consent. 38 2008/56/EC Article 13.4 214