Dr. Deirdre Lynn:

One area we think we will strengthen in the fourth national biodiversity action plan will be progress on invasive alien species, which was not progressed in the third national biodiversity action plan to the extent it deserved attention. It is mostly the mainstreaming and the socialising of biodiversity across government. Interestingly, the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform will start tagging government expenditure for biodiversity and also looking at expenditure that could be considered harmful for biodiversity. We are making great steps in trying to figure out what we are spending; where are we spending it; and can we be smarter? The role of NPWS is to try to socialise a lot of those different elements and work with our colleagues across government to try and raise the profile and the importance of the biodiversity agenda.