Kilkenny councillor welcomes new bill to protect urban trees and nature sites

Kilkenny City councillor Maria Dollard has welcomed the news that the Green Party has launched the ‘Urban Tree Protection and Sites Locally Important for Ecology Bill 2023’.

This bill will strengthen the protection of trees in urban areas and enable communities to designate local sites as being an important biodiversity area.

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“Since being co-opted to Kilkenny County Council, I have dealt with a very high level of complaints from people across the city who are utterly dismayed at the way trees are cut down without any consideration of alternative solutions to issues or complaints raised by some members of the public,” the Green Party councillor said.

“We need to protect trees as much as possible in a city where the lack of green infrastructure was highlighted in the Collaborative Town Centre Health Check Report last year.

“There have seen good examples of tree replacement, like in Ormonde Street, but the best tree is the one that exists already and removal of trees should be the last resort and not the first,” Cllr Dollard continued.

“We need to move away from the idea of nature being in the way of our plans and towards thinking that nature should be accommodated first and foremost.

“We are not saving the planet,” she added, “we are looking after the only planet we have. Without nature as we know it now, we can’t survive ourselves.”

The bill was announced by Steven Matthews TD, Green Party Spokesperson for Planning and Local Government.

“For many of us, being able to walk around our parks and green spaces was a lifeline and the only thing that kept us sane during the pandemic,” he said.

“We rediscovered the importance of nature locally. This bill puts power back into the hands of local communities, to decide what is important locally, so that we don’t lose these precious sites.

“What this means practically is that anybody in the community can request that their local Council protects a certain local nature site. The Council may then prohibit the wilful destruction of the site and landowners may have to enter into an agreement with the planning authority to properly manage the site.”

The overarching goal of the bill is to protect more of the spaces and features which are important to people and nature, without hindering the development of much-needed housing and local infrastructure.

This bill does that by introducing ‘Sites Locally Important for Ecology’, which communities can designate to protect important local nature areas.

The bill also prioritises the treatment and management of trees over cutting down. Where trees do have to be cut down, there will be a duty to replant and an additional duty on public bodies to provide an arborist’s report.

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The bill also changes the tree preservation order process. Stakeholders suggest that one of the primary reasons for the poor uptake in the current tree preservation orders process is that the order itself represents an ‘all-or-nothing’ decision; once it has been granted, it is very difficult to remove, which leads to more caution in granting them.

People will be allowed to appeal decisions where there has been a refusal to allow for works involving the tree.

“International and EU laws mean that we are legally required to increase our green urban areas,” Deputy Matthews added.

“This bill is a step in that direction. This bill will allow us to protect trees based on their climate, flood risk and air quality benefits, rather than the current narrow definition of ‘amenity value’.”