Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for a really good presentation. I do not believe anyone in the committee would fail to be impressed by the statement that this is the first generation to know and the last generation that can do anything about it. Looking back at the last national biodiversity plan, it sounds like we are trying to turn an oil tanker, which is not a great metaphor in a fossil fuel crisis. Can Mr. Ó Donnchú give us some insight into what failed in that plan? What were the shortcomings of the last plan that might give us lessons for the next one? It certainly seems, as was shown on the screen, that there were no geographic targets. That sounds like an extraordinary omission. It does not chime with the citizens' advisory group that talked about targets and timeliness being at the heart of any successor plan. We would like to hear a bit more about that because the plan presumably is going to be the linchpin around which we will try to get change. Maybe the witnesses could send us some details on the enforcement activity and the impact and so on because we had the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in last week and it pointed the finger at local authorities. This week it is pointing the finger at particular local authorities that have failed. It named four today in the media, so there is a bit of name and shame in that regard. Certainly, the view of the citizens' assembly was that enforcement has lacked teeth, that the responsibilities must be clear, bodies must be held accountable for performance and there should be a review of enforcement and so on. It was critical of enforcement generally. I know part of that is about more staff and so on but are there other barriers to being successful?

The issue we keep coming back to is, as Mr. Ó Donnchú himself said, 70% of the impact is coming from agriculture, broadly speaking. Can he paint a vision for agriculture in ten years' time which will be prosperous but will be aligned with the regeneration of nature? I believe that is where a lot falls down. Senator Dooley mentioned how people who stepped up now feel disappointed. However, there does not seem to be an income stream or something that gives people confidence for the future, if they shift the way they manage. Who is going to generate that? The agriculture sector was warning us that you cannot be too confident in saying carbon farming will generate resources. We are told that on rewetting bogs we cannot be confident that farmers can generate income for an individual hectare of land. There seems to be that gulf between the 70% of key agents and the climate. Lastly, the assembly was very much saying there needs to be a higher authority to bang heads, essentially saying that other Departments are not aligned with what the witnesses are trying to achieve. Perhaps they do not want to comment on that but has that arisen in consideration of the national biodiversity plan, for example, who would bang heads?