I propose to take Questions Nos. 605, 606, 607 and 608 together.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) in my Department undertake regular monitoring and surveys of breeding seabird colonies around Ireland in order to provide an evidence base to inform conservation management measures and decisions. I am aware of the preliminary work that was undertaken by the British Trust for Ornithology in regions of Wales and England, where a random selection of 1km grid squares that were dominated by urban and suburban habitats were surveyed for breeding gulls, using several methods including drones and ground-based surveys. This work has allowed the derivation of correction factors that are to be incorporated into a mathematical model using data from randomly selected squares across Ireland and Britain where ground-based surveys were carried out. The model will take into account the different count results arising from the different counting methods used in the preliminary work. Thus, it is envisaged that, when the data is analysed, statistically-robust population estimates will be produced for both Herring Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gulls at various geographic levels.
As part of this collaborative work plan, and via a public procurement process, my Department issued a contract to an experienced and expert company to lead on the requisite Irish survey work. The network of NPWS conservation rangers has also undertaken a significant amount of the survey work which has helped keep the overall costs of this work down. The cost of the contract is €75,250 (excluding VAT).
The fieldwork aspects of this work finished in June this year and over 99% of the randomly generated squares were successfully covered. In addition, several other non-randomly generated squares were completed. The data from the Irish survey and contract is now undergoing Quality Assurance procedures. This is due to be completed in August and part of the deliverables is a report describing the numbers and distributions of breeding urban gulls recorded during the 2021 survey. The data will then be shared with the UK JNCC to undertake the analysis as described above. It is not possible to give a publication date at this point.