A national inventory of geoheritage sites known as County Geological Sites (CGSs) is managed by the Geoheritage Programme of Geological Survey Ireland. CGSs, as adopted under the National Heritage Plan, include sites that are of national importance which have been selected as the very best examples for NHA (Natural Heritage Areas) designation. NHA designation will be completed in partnership with the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). CGSs are now routinely included in County Development Plans and in the GIS of planning departments, to ensure the recognition and appropriate protection of geological heritage within the planning system. CGSs can be viewed online under the Geological Heritage tab on the online
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Geological heritage audits and associated reports have been completed for 30 of 31 local authority areas. The audit for County Kerry will commence in 2024. The audit reports are accompanied by individual, short, non-technical site reports for each audited county geological heritage site. All reports are available for download from the Geoheritage Programme pages of our website.
County Geoheritage Sites as listed in County Development Plans should be assessed as environmental constraints with any proposed development, plan or policy.
Ideally, the sites should not be damaged or integrity impacted or reduced in any manner due to the proposed development, plan or policy. However, this is not always possible, and in this situation appropriate mitigation measures should be put in place to minimize or mitigate potential impacts. Where the integrity cannot be preserved we would ask that careful consideration be given in design to accommodating preservation of geological exposures such as, road cuttings or quarry extensions and access to the site during construction to record the exposures. This will strengthen our knowledge and datasets.
We would also ask that the design of any future development considers the use of information panels as appropriate to highlight the significance of the impacted CGS. Please contact Geological Survey Ireland Planning Programme (GSIPlanning[AT]gsi.ie) for further information and possible mitigation measures if applicable.
Where planning and environmental assessment relate to quarries we would request that the operator might assist our geological heritage goals with the following (and ideally this would be written into the restoration / closure plan) and be included as a condition of planning as deemed appropriate by the planning authority:
- Allowing access to quarry faces by appropriate scientists (upon request and with due regards to Health and Safety requirements) during quarrying to check for interesting new stratigraphy / relationships as they might become exposed and to establish if the quarry site is worthy of recognition post extraction and through aftercare/restoration planning.
- If deemed appropriate in (1) above, leaving a representative section of the quarry face at the end of the quarry life or inclusion of information panels to promote the geology to the public or develop tourism or educational resources if appropriate depending on the future use of the site. Natural exposures are few, or deeply weathered, this measure would permit on-going improvement of geological knowledge of the subsurface.
The
Geoheritage Programme tries to promote a partnership between geological heritage and active quarrying, with such measures as those outlined in the ‘Geological Heritage Guidelines for the Extractive Industry’, which can be downloaded from
here. This document, written in association with Irish Concrete Federation, acts as a comprehensive guide in the sustainable extraction of natural resources while preserving the geological heritage of Ireland.