Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his comments and I might ask my officials to come in on some of them. The Deputy asked a question similar to Deputy Ó Broin’s question on the architecture policy that is due to be published shortly. We can seek to get a draft to members ahead of that publication.

There were a number of other questions on the energy policy and the national architecture policy that I will deal with. I refer to the national policy on architecture and the Places for People document. As Ms Ryan said, a delivery board will be established to implement the actions of the policy, including that research element the Deputy is talking about. While the policy will apply the broad parameters, further work will need to be done to map existing resources, identify gaps and scope out more detailed research requirements regarding this. We would welcome the Deputy’s comments on that and I welcome Deputy Ó Broin’s comments on this committee’s commitment to supporting this work on our architectural policy, which is critically important. Far too often we see buildings that are 30 or 40 years old being knocked in Dublin and across the country. These building are perfectly reusable and have an architectural value in their own right. It is critically important that this policy informs local authorities about the reuse and repurposing of these buildings and about the embodied energy that is locked into them. A lot of work has been done on this by the International Council on Monuments and Sites Ireland as well. We welcome the commitment given by members to support that.

I refer to biodiversity officers in local authorities and yesterday we announced the expanded roll-out of same. Currently, only five local authorities have biodiversity officers. I take on board the Deputy’s point about heritage officers being stretched. They have asked us for assistant heritage officers and that is something local authorities need to prioritise. We also need conservation officers, architects, archivists, archaeologists and a full suite of staffing within our heritage division to do this important and necessary interdisciplinary work across all sections of local government. We announced €600,000 in funding yesterday and we are still in the process of designing that scheme. We want to make sure it is actionable and that it is tied in with the national biodiversity action plan, the strategic biodiversity action plan therein and the protection of our Natura 2000 networks. We want that to have a key role for heritage officers, not just a supporting role . Heritage officers need those additional resources but what we are saying about the biodiversity officers is that we want this to be a good scheme that is supported.

There was a question on the farm plan scheme and it is the case that we will expand it next year. The scheme operates nationally and targets various habitats and species, working with farmers to go above and beyond their statutory requirements. We already expanded the scheme in 2020 and by the end of 2021 we should have over 200 plans in place, pending participant approval. It has been hugely popular, with others currently in design by agri-ecologists contracted to the NPWS. We hope to bring this to over 250 plans and it is expected that a new call for applications will be made in 2022. This will support the delivery of our conservation measures nationally and the staffing of the NPWS agri-ecology unit will be increased in 2021 to service the increased demand for farm plan schemes. I hope that answers the Deputy’s questions. If there is anything I have missed perhaps Ms Ryan or Ms Nally from the NPWS might come back on specific elements of the Deputy’s questions that I have missed.