Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would also be fair to say that if one asked people in the countryside about hedgerows and the greatest change to same in the past 70 or 80 years, they would not point to hedgerows being cut down, but to their growing wild. Traditionally, farmers cut the hedges, folded them back onto themselves and made them bushy and thick. They did that by hand. It was every year's winter work and, therefore, was within the cycle of nature of nesting birds. There is an idea that the kinds of hedge we have now are the same that we had 100 years ago but according to all of the old people I know they are not. It was only in more recent times that people stopped trimming hedges every year and keeping them at reasonable levels.

I concur with Deputy Barry. Negotiating minor rural roads is causing a major problem in terms of road and vehicular damage. Anyone who has experience of running trucks or other vehicles knows that they could be driven up and down a motorway and there would not be a dent in them, but they would burst tyres and so forth on rural roads. As the Deputy mentioned, roads are getting damp.