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Displaying items by tag: Alarm: Birdwatch Ireland

#irishports - Independent.ie writes Birdwatch Ireland is "alarmed" at emergency orders that could be utilised by the Government to override planning procedures for a no-deal Brexit scenario at Dublin and Rosslare ports.

The group is concerned for the safety of birds who make their habitats within Ireland, including a colony of terns in a special protection zone at Dublin Bay.

The Government is set to rely on emergency planning orders in the wake of any no-deal Brexit on March 29.

Oonagh Duggan, assistant head of policy and advocacy at Birdwatch Ireland, said: "We are living in an ecological emergency, with 68pc of regularly occurring birds in Ireland on the red and amber lists of the Birds of Conservation Concern in Ireland. Any shortcuts on environmental assessment could have devastating consequences on wildlife."

Published in Irish Ports

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.