Freshwater Pearl Mussel Ireland

With the health, safety and wellbeing of our participant farmers, colleagues, and project stakeholders in mind, we are providing this update on how the Pearl Mussel Project will deal with and work through the Covid-19 virus outbreak for the foreseeable future.

Most of our staff will be working remotely although a limited number, for now, will continue to work from the office. Our phone lines will remain open and emails will be dealt with as normal.

All upcoming farmer consultation meetings that were to be held over the next month are postponed until further notice. We are currently exploring alternative means of holding these meetings remotely.

One-on-one farmer meetings will continue for the time being, subject to prior agreement with the relevant farmers and we will strictly adhere to social distancing guidelines during such meetings.

We will be in touch with farmers, advisors, or other stakeholders to make alternative arrangements for any scheduled face-to-face meetings. Where feasible scheduled face-to-face meetings will be replaced with phone or video call.

Scheduled fieldwork and farm surveys will continue as planned where it doesn’t require close person-person contact, and this is agreeable with the landowner, and can be conducted in line with any guidance from public authorities.

We will continue to monitor the situation and update our approach as necessary and will notify stakeholders of any significant changes. 

We wish all of our farmers and colleagues well during this difficult period.

HSE.ie guidelines summary: