Dr. Deirdre Lynn:

On the EU taxonomy and the delegated Acts, I foresee that many companies will have to provide the information. Some of the bigger companies, in particular, are building up their sustainability teams and their biodiversity expertise.

We may get into a situation where we find some of the private sector companies have more ecology staff than us. I am not clear where the reporting lines go back in when they report back. I assume that goes in on an EU level, for them to determine whether they have undertaken due diligence and they have proceeded with "do no harm". We have also just launched our own business and biodiversity platform. We have some founding members for that platform. We launched it at the biodiversity conference last year. That is to try to bring businesses on board, to engage them and ensure that they understand the opportunities available to them and their dependencies. There will be webinars on how they look at their supply chains and how they undertake many of those activities. There is quite a big business movement ongoing at present at national level and at EU level, where is a business and biodiversity platform. I think it is called a business movement in the EU biodiversity strategy. The EU is ramping up, as well, in terms of supporting businesses and bringing them along and both sides exchanging their views.

The nature restoration law will be very significant. I believe the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, has already requested that very high-level officials get together to discuss the implications of the EU restoration law when it comes out. There may be different threads to this. There will be targets relating to the numbers of the EU protected habitats and species returning to favourable status or ensuring no further decline and there could be wider ecosystem targets for restoration. We have to draw up our own national restoration plan, as well. We have to have discussions about who leads on these big biodiversity agenda items. Where restoration has to happen, agricultural policies will have to be considered. We will have to figure out how we all work together to develop that restoration plan in the next six months. That is a very important one that members should probably be bringing back to this committee. The members should ask, not only the National Parks and Wildlife Service but also some of our colleagues from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the forest service about how we all intend to work together to achieve those very ambitious restoration targets.