Mr. Niall ? Donnch?:

I acknowledge the Deputy’s interest in this area and his engagement with us across a number of issues. I will answer his question about the new agency on nature by saying that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is that new national agency - established by Government in May 2022 as an executive agency. We are operating to fulfil the strategic action plan for the renewal of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The question of what is needed is a good one. You can have an agency with responsibility for something, but if the rest of the Government system is not engaging with it, it will fall short in its objectives. The first test of several came for us in the context of drawing up the national biodiversity action plan.

I referred to our experience this time in terms of the engagement with us, as an agency, across government in the context of drawing that up and making it significantly different from and better than previous plans. That is not to criticise those plans. They were of their time and there were certain constraints and so on in the system at the time. When one engages with this, one will see it is a better plan. Everybody is at the table and has contributed. The amending Act that will give a statutory basis to this plan will also be helpful in underpinning the governance, reporting and accountability on delivery for that plan, not just for us as the lead agency but for all State contributors to the plan.

I am conscious not to hog the entire conversation. I know Dr. Bleasdale wishes to come in.

A second test for us, as a new agency, was in our role spearheading the establishment of a national position to respond to the draft nature restoration regulation, which has been given airtime here today. We were resourced to deal with that. We got a small new directorate to lead for Ireland on that, to co-ordinate across government and to present Ireland's position at working group, at Council and so forth. In terms of an acid test of how the system would engage with us, as a new agency, that was incredibly powerful and there was an incredibly positive return. There were difficult conversations - I can say that in here - because this is a challenging regulation. It is challenging for the farming, fishing and urban communities. It challenges the entirety of society. Our job in that context was to spearhead co-ordination, agree the national position across fairly challenging articles - I know members are familiar with that as the committee has engaged on it - and then present the agreed national position.

A further challenge for us, and this is something that keeps me awake at night, will be the agreement of the national restoration plan by 2026, assuming everything goes to schedule. The system is learning to work better with us. We now have a seat at Cabinet sub-committees. Nature did not previously, in its own right, have a seat at the Cabinet sub-committee. We have a system of comitology across the government system that works quite well. We have systems of working groups. The reciprocal for us is that we are also participating across the system where water framework, oceanography, climate action and climate mitigation issues are discussed. We are a key component and element in the public policy response in those spheres, too. I will hand over to Dr. Bleasdale to deal with the other questions.