Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)

I have a question for the ESB and the local authorities. The maintenance of the roadside trees is an ongoing issue. This is probably going back to the point Deputy Stanley made. It is just an ongoing issue. It is a responsibility of landowners but also local authorities to ensure the ongoing maintenance of trees on roadside verges where a pruning or reduction in the number of trees can actually improve their resilience. I notice, however, that as a knee jerk to Storm Éowyn there has been a butchering in many parts of the country where trees are just being taken out wantonly and even ash trees, notwithstanding ash dieback. Some parts of the UK are looking at leaving some standing ash trees because some are developing a resilience. That is one issue.

Separately, from the ESB's perspective and the maintenance of urban trees, I have often seen cases where trees have been cut in half to prevent damage to ESB infrastructure. Sometimes that in itself has a destabilising impact on those urban trees as well. Perhaps we can have just a general comment on the maintenance of trees generally.