Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Dr. Donaghy is right. All of this must be done. The climate action plan calls for this mapping exercise to be done by the end of the year. That can be done in conjunction with the revision of the Common Agricultural Policy provisions so that farmers are paid when we designate wetland areas for restoration. At the same time we must change our entire forestry support model so we stop supporting clear-fell single-species monoculture forestry and start putting everything into the more diverse forestry environment the witnesses have mentioned. That will require the National Parks and Wildlife Service to be resourced properly because it is a huge project and my experience is that the service's numbers are very limited.

Will the witnesses comment on that? Have they any sense of the scale of resources that might be needed in the National Parks and Wildlife Service? Do they find that it is able to respond quickly or is it constrained by a lack of resources?