Dr. Brendan Dunford:

I am glad to hear the Deputy is a fellow fan of the Burren. Our dream was that the Burren, which is a beautiful little project, would have a big ripple effect throughout Ireland and be taken up and enhanced in other areas such as the hen harrier project, the freshwater pearl mussel project and the BRIDE project. There is no reason Ireland cannot emulate that at a European level and, as we said earlier, become the green heart of the European Green Deal. We have unique potential in Ireland to become that. Nationally, we need what we had locally in the Burren, namely, great local leadership, the enabling of policies, partnerships between scientists, farmers and policymakers, and engagement and belief among farming communities that they will look after their heritage because it is too important to leave it to others. We need to take that role nationally and that is our hope.

I acknowledge this is a meeting of the climate action committee but I am delighted somebody has raised biodiversity. Climate change is described as a wicked problem and we need a wicked solution. Nature can provide that. It has the complexity to do so if it is managed in the correct way. Talking about farming and biodiversity is entirely opportune for this discussion. I encourage the committee to bear in mind they should not focus too much on the single issue of climate but examine the broader issue of both biodiversity and the crisis in food nutrition. We can resolve all these issues by managing the land in the correct way. We have the farmers to do that and we need the policies and the support to make it happen.