Irish Spatial Data Exchange
Special Areas of Conservation
Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) are part of the Natura 2000 network of European sites, designated in accordance with the EU Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), to protect selected habitats and species.
SACs boundaries are mapped using Irish Transverse Mercator (epsg 2157) or Irish Grid. Off-shore marine SACs are in WGS84 (epsg 4326) and have their areas calculated in ETRS89 LAEA (epsg 3035). Details of the co-ordinate system for each SAC site can be found in the attribute table.
This is a national dataset and is split into two separate file download: SACs within the bounds of the ITM coordinate reference system and off-shore SACs which are provided in WGS 84.
Simple
- Alternate title
-
SAC
- Date (Publication)
- 2026-02-13T00:00:00
- Citation identifier
- https://data.gov.ie/dataset/ / special-areas-of-conservation
- Purpose
-
To report on and manage Special Area of Conservation designations within the Republic of Ireland.
- Status
- On going
- Point of contact
-
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
National Parks and Wildlife Service
Point of contact
- Maintenance and update frequency
- As needed
-
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
-
-
Protected sites
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-
GEMET - Concepts, version 4.2.3
-
-
protection of animals, protection of species, protection of birds, wildlife protection, terrestrial ecosystem, biodiversity, ecological, habitat, ecology, animal species, wildlife sanctuary
-
-
National Parks and Wildlife Service
-
-
Special Area of Conservation, SAC, National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, biodiversity, habitat, species, habitat protection, heritage, National Biodiversity Action Plan
-
-
ISO 3166
-
-
Ireland
-
- Use limitation
- Access constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
-
Copyright Government of Ireland. This dataset was created by National Parks and Wildlife Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This copyright material is licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Spatial representation type
- Vector
- Denominator
- 10560
- Language
- English
- Character set
- UTF8
- Topic category
-
- Environment
- Biota
))
Vertical extent
- Minimum value
- 0
- Maximum value
- 1014
Vertical CS
Vertical datum
- Reference system identifier
-
EPSG
/
https://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/2157
EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset EPSG 2009-11-25
- Distribution format
-
Name Version Esri shapefile
v10.x
- Distributor contact
-
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
National Parks and Wildlife Service
Point of contact
- OnLine resource
-
Protocol Linkage Name application/zip
https://www.npws.ie//sites/default/files/files/SAC_ITM_2026_01.zip Zip file containing shapefile download
- OnLine resource
-
Protocol Linkage Name text/html
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/edf34d92e28040fd87d3d14f55d8d95f/ National Parks and Wildlife Service Protected Sites Map Viewer
- OnLine resource
-
Protocol Linkage Name OGC:WFS
https://dservices-eu1.arcgis.com/Jhij7i46ouO8Cc0N/arcgis/services/NPWSDesignatedAreasWFS/WFSServer?service=wfs&request=getcapabilities WFS GetCapabilities operation
- OnLine resource
-
Protocol Linkage Name ESRI REST
https://services-eu1.arcgis.com/Jhij7i46ouO8Cc0N/arcgis/rest/services/NPWSDesignatedAreas/FeatureServer/ esri rest
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Conformance result
- Title
-
INSPIRE Data Specification on Protected sites
- Alternate title
-
INSPIRE Data Specifications v2024.1
- Date (Publication)
- 2024-01-31
- Explanation
-
The INSPIRE Directive or INSPIRE lays down a general framework for a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the purposes of European Community environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.
- Pass
- No
Conformance result
- Title
-
COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
- Alternate title
-
INSPIRE Interoperability Regulation
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Explanation
-
Level of conformance with the COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
- Pass
- No
- Statement
-
This spatial dataset and associated web services is currently presented in Irish Transverse Mercator projection. The majority of site boundaries were originally digitised from Ordnance Survey of Ireland 1:10560 six-inch raster data in Irish Grid. Over time an increasing number of site boundaries in this dataset will be replotted to Ordnance Survey of Ireland 1:5000 vector mapping in Irish Transverse Mercator. The spatial dataset and associated web services contain two feature level metadata fields: SOURCE_SCALE AND SOURCE_CRS to identify the source scale and projection that the site boundary feature is derived from.
Metadata
- File identifier
- 2593190e-9a49-43a4-b4a8-9467257099fa XML
- Metadata language
- English
- Character set
- UTF8
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2026-02-13T15:25:21Z
- Metadata standard name
-
ISDI Metadata Profile
- Metadata standard version
-
1.2
- Metadata author
-
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
National Parks and Wildlife Service
Author
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