Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If I may, I will make a helpful point. Mr. Michael Silke, a representative of the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, appeared before the committee a couple of months ago. Mr. Smyth's statement that people must keep the channels clear makes sense. As Mr. Silke informed us, though, when a channel near his farm was not cleared for a certain amount of time, a little island developed and became protected despite not having existed 30 years beforehand. It seems that the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, are adopting what would be called in the US a wilderness strategy. That is fine in the US, which has massive tracts of land where there are no people, but we cannot live in a wilderness. This is the problem.