Mr. Vincent Roddy:

I will respond to Senator Paul Daly's second question. Mr. Keane and others have covered food security. The impact will not only be on food security. The wider impact on rural Ireland will be devastating and we must be conscious of that. Most members of the committee are from rural Ireland but we hope other Deputies will recognise that as well.

No consultation has taken place with farming organisations. It is interesting that the document states a public consultation process took place. That is listed. An online survey was conducted between January and April 2021 and 111,000 replies were received. It is interesting that 97% were in favour of more aggressive EU restoration targets. The figure of 97% is close to the results of some of Vladimir Putin's referendums in Ukraine so I do not know how much attention we can pay to it. When we talk about this, we must also recognise that what is being proposed will hard-wire the EU biodiversity strategy into legislation. It is a massive document and has major implications for us, but no consultation has taken place on that. It has been sitting there since May 2020. We have tried to engage but it has been minimal. It is great that the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss is discussing it at the moment but we are concerned that forum will be seen as the consultation. The people who really need to be consulted are the representatives of the farming organisations who are on the frontline.