€90,000 home for bats in South Galway

WORK has begun on a €90,000 home for the Lesser Horseshoe Bat on the outskirts of the Coole and Garyland Estate in South Galway. The National Roads Design Office at Galway County Council confirmed that a house on the estate is being renovated for the species and a bat roost is being constructed at a combined cost of €89,754, including VAT.
The work is being carried out by Duane Construction Ltd and is in preparation for the construction of the next phase of the Atlantic Corridor, which will see the M18 extend from Gort to Tuam through the Coole Park nature reserve managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
“The Lesser Horseshoe Bat has statutory protection under the EU Habitats Directive. That is why this is being done. The contract is signed and work is commenced. It has to be carried out at a specific time of the year, which is appropriate for the species,” explained Michael Timmins, senior engineer, National Roads Design Office, Galway County Council.
“Works are being done on the building to make it more attractive for the bats. It involves the renovation of the existing building and the construction of a bat roost beside it. The works have to be carried out as part of the permission for the scheme and this solution or mitigation measure came about after meetings between NPWS and specialist ecologists for the scheme,” he continued.
The Lesser Horseshoe Bat is extinct in parts of central Europe but is found in parts of the West of Ireland and usually roosts in uninhabited cottages, churches and outbuildings and hibernates in mines, caves, cellars or ice houses.
This not the first time accommodation for the Lesser Horseshoe Bat has featured in the construction of infrastructure in the region.
As part of an earlier stage of the Atlantic Corridor, Gama Construction built a bat house at a cost of about €200,000 close to the Ennis bypass.