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

I am sorry that I could not make it here before now. I was tied up with something else. My understanding, from looking at the documentation provided and from what was said to me when it became known that our guests would be coming in, is that in parts of the country, the cutting of hedgerows is a major issue. In large swathes of the west, especially where I live, there is very little hedgerow cutting and any such cutting is quite cursory in nature. It is done along the roads by the county council, on just the outside hedges, not the inside hedges, in an attempt to make them more vertical than lateral. Even in the time that I have been in Corr na Móna, there are many more hedges, including many higher ones, in the west than was the case previously. These are deciduous, whitethorn or traditional hedges. This year was a great year for whitethorn. If one drives along the roads, they are ablaze with whitethorn. There is more gorse than there ever was. In fact, more land is used than there was 40, 50 or 60 years ago.

Are there areas of the country where the hedgerows and the bees are thriving? I remember it being pointed out to me many years ago that there was a substantial change in farming balance and patterns from a multicultural approach, with the sowing of oats, potatoes, vegetables, some fruit and so on being popular, to just producing more and more grass because that is what farmers were getting paid to do. Has that had a negative effect on what our guests were describing? The hedges are not cut across large swathes of the country and there is much more cover than previously, with many more wild flowers not being cut. Is the bee population in those areas thriving? In areas where there is wholesale mechanical cutting by the farmers with sophisticated machines that can cut every side of the hedge - up, down and across - is there a difference in the number of bees? How much is the change in farm practice having an effect?