Dr. Aoibhinn N? Sh?illeabh?in:

I will answer the first question on fragmentation. As I said, it was a permanent theme across all the presentations to members of the assembly. If we look at the recommendations that reference a strategic approach, which was mentioned by the Senator, the members of the assembly recommended that a senior ministerial position with an associated department have responsibility for biodiversity. Within that, considerations could probably be made. As we have a Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, would biodiversity be better placed there rather than under natural heritage? I wanted to refer to recommendation No. 22 and, with that, a cross-party, standing Oireachtas committee, which this committee very much is. It is about emphasising that government structures should highlight the priority of biodiversity by giving it those senior roles and emphasising it. That was something assembly members highlighted in many of the discussions.

On the rights of nature, and I will pass over to Ms Jones and Mr. Joyce on that as well, this was something we had not necessarily planned for when considering our talks and presentations for the members of the assembly but after the very first meeting, members started to come to me as chair saying they would like to hear a little more about rights, including the right for us to have a clean environment and the rights of nature. With that, we invited Professor Áine Ryall from University College Cork, UCC, who is one of the international experts in this area. She spoke to members about this but it was interesting that the theme had come up in many other conversations, such as those with Professor Robert Watson and Professor Jane Stout. We heard from a lot of different people about it. It was interesting to hear that nature is garnering rights in other jurisdictions and other countries whereby, similar to a business having a board of directors, an element of nature might too. What I wanted to emphasise here is that the reasoning for it was to make sure nature was still there to protect and provide for us. Considering this element of the constitutional amendment, it was about us not depending on it and then it would disappear but that we would protect it in that regard.