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

Again, we see this as unrelated. I had engagement with the provider of the open litter map as well. What we have done recently is bolster the governance around the national biodiversity data centre, and its ability to gather data through citizen science has been greatly enhanced. We have seen, particularly during Covid, that it has had a real significant spike in people inputting through its portal, biodiversity.ie, and uploading citizen science data on species throughout the country. That has been fantastic. We encourage people and communities to be involved in data-gathering because it is very beneficial to the State to have good data available around species distribution and plotting trends in terms of climate change and biodiversity loss. We very much support a citizen science-led approach, and this will be reflected in the next national biodiversity action plan.