Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

On that point, from my own experience of growing up on a family farm, which was then pretty small, my parents put in a huge effort to buy an extra bit of land to make it viable, as did many families. To go back to those days, I can recall the family farm was really efficient and environmentally aware. You would watch how the whitethorns and the blackthorns would develop and you would hear stories from your parents about how such an event would mean that such a kind of weather would occur. As for birdlife, you never interfered with a bird's nest and you protected wildlife. There was so much there from an environmental perspective from a farming background. I admit that has probably disappeared. I was involved with cutting a little bit of turf this year and after about 20 years of being missing, the curlew was back in that area of Roscommon. Everybody that I spoke to in the farming community was delighted to hear that sound back.

In many respects we can agree on a lot but while this is not a reflection on any of the witnesses, we need to have a different and better type of engagement. As I said earlier, engagement is about getting into local communities and I know that will mean more work for people like our witnesses. As I came from a horticultural background before I went into radio, I have a question for the witnesses. What is their opinion on importing briquettes from Latvia? What damage is that doing? We closed down the bogs.