A provision in Minister Gormley’s Planning and Development Bill 2009, which requires consent from An Bord Pleanála for extraction of areas of more than three and a half hectares, will heap added pressure and expense on quarries and will ultimately cost hundreds of jobs in Galway according to local Fine Gael Senator, Fidelma Healy Eames.

“Far from putting measures in place to shore up the economy and help create jobs, Fianna Fáil and the Greens are intent on chipping away at the businesses that remain, making it near impossible for them to survive.

“The Live Register figures released today show a further 15,000 people have joined our unending dole queues, with unemployment now at 13.4%. An Taoiseach’s response to the jobs crisis this morning, was to say the only way to create more jobs in Ireland is to be more competitive. Heaping additional and unnecessary charges on already struggling small businesses, such as legal and compliant quarries in Galway, will ultimately mean the loss of more jobs.

“A provision in the Planning and Development Amendment Bill (2009) states that quarries that extract areas of more than three and a half hectares will have to apply to An Bord Pleanála for new ‘substitute consent’. If this measure goes ahead it will have a critical impact on more than 100 quarries in the Galway region, affecting upwards of 1000 jobs.

“The cost to the business of the application, coupled with additional costs associated with planning consultants and engineers, is estimated to run into tens of thousands of euro. This will have the net effect of pushing quarries, which are SMEs, closer to the edge, starving them of scarce funds and creating unnecessary debt which will result in staff having to be laid off. One long established Conneamara-based quarry told me that the costs to them of this measure would be in the region of €40,000 in planning and associated professional charges. In this way the State is hampering viable business when it should be pursuing illegal, non-compliant quarries and encouraging and facilitating those that are compliant.

“Clearly, this legislation will cause needless hardship for already struggling quarries. This incompetent Government needs to get a grip and begin to recognise that unless measures are put in place to protect the jobs we have left and stem the flow of increasing joblessness, we will never get our country back on track.

“Fine Gael is the only Party with a plan to get the country back to work. If the Fianna Fáil and the Greens refuse to support business and jobs, they should step aside and make way for the Party that can.”