Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know I arrived late to the meeting but I was tuned in and heard every word. I have heard everything our guests have said and I saw the presentation, which was fantastic. Fair play to our guests. If I was 16 or nine years old, there is not a hope I would have come up to an Oireachtas committee meeting, which is televised live, to answer all these questions. I can tell our guests they are brave. I thank them for what they are doing.

I have a few questions to get straight to it. I would love to hear about our guests' trips for field work to Killarney and Wicklow. Did they get down and dirty? Did they investigate some of the species that are in trouble, whose numbers might be decreasing or whose habitats might be declining? I would love to hear a bit about that work. I would love to hear about the field work our guests got into. What did they learn from that type of field work, if it did happen? Were there alarming statistics in respect of some of the species and how their numbers are reducing? Were there positive stories? I know our guests mentioned some positives that we sometimes do not highlight. Were there good stories about other species and how proper habitat measures have allowed them to bounce back? That is my first question.

I would love to know how our guests got on with the Minister of State, Malcolm Noonan. I saw in their presentation that he was there. I think he is pretty sound but I would love to know how our guests got on with him. He made our guests an important promise. He said he will ensure that the recommendations of the assembly will be put in policy. That is a big promise and we have to make sure he holds up to that. An important document, the national biodiversity action plan, will be produced shortly. It will set out the points. Did the Minister of State promise our guests that their solutions will be included in that? What happens if they are not? Do we have to hold him to account to make sure they are in the national biodiversity action plan? That is important.

I love recommendation 5, which states that biodiversity protection must be a shared responsibility and a global collaborative effort. The reason I love that is because we can do a lot of measures for certain species but they might be migratory. A good example is the swift. Everyone knows what a swift looks like and they scream around our towns during the summer. We could make new legislation that would require every new building to have a swift box. That would be good because it would help to provide them with a breeding habitat. However, those birds move to completely different areas of the world during the winter and those countries may not have the same focus on protecting them. How do we make that collaborative global effort? Have our guests reached out to other youth citizen's assemblies? Are there other youth citizens' assemblies around biodiversity? What should we do around that?

I can sense the passion for biodiversity in our guests. I get that when as a TD, I call around to schools. I meet a lot of kids who love biodiversity. They love talking about whales, dolphins and sharks. They cannot get enough of it. Do our guests think that sometimes, as we get older, we start to lose that? We become more focused on getting a job and on family. Those things that were priorities start to slip away. Do our guests think that happens? How do we stop that from happening? How do we keep adults interested in saving biodiversity and getting excited about it?

There was a lot there. I thank our guests again for coming in.