Ms Ciara Carberry:

Most recently, we had an information day on 20 June on our new peatland and Natura community engagement scheme. That scheme has been expanded from just peatlands now to encompass other habitats that are Natura sites.

The day was well attended. The scheme has been running since 2018 and has funded 125 or 126 projects in the country. Wild Atlantic Nature now also has its Natura communities initiative, which is embedded in communities. More than 800 individuals, including farmers, are engaged in there and the Natura communities are going to spread nationwide shortly. Part of Wild Atlantic Nature's ethos is to engage with rural communities, in particular, on the basis that people in rural communities make wise and intelligent choices and want to do the right thing, and we need to make sure we create an environment where people have alternatives and whereby, where they want to work with us and with nature, it will be viable for them to do that. Our experience has certainly been very positive.

I have just got back from Kerry, where I was dealing with our new marine national park. The staff there have since 19 April had 34 meetings in the community, of which four were open to the public. They were very well attended. I just attended the most recent four meetings and did not attend all 34. There is huge appetite in that community. We held the four public meetings on a geographical basis to make sure a range of communities with different experiences had an opportunity to engage with us, and engage they did. We have got some fantastic ideas and fantastic offers of support and engagement there. One of the items of feedback that came through strongly in the public meetings related to how delighted people were to have a face to put to a name and to have a human point of contact in the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Something we have perhaps struggled with is not always being as visible as we could be or not always being as easy to find locally as we could be, so we had our ranger grade there and the district conservation officer at all the meetings, and people there now know who is behind this national park, what we want and what we are saying.

We are improving all the time at community engagement because, at the end of the day, sustainably, it is the only way we will get long-term results, and the only way we will protect nature sustainably in the long term is if the local community is protecting it.