Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein)

I am sure the Minister has been fully briefed on the devastating impact on farmers and on wildlife in the areas affected by the fires. It is ironic because the farming community is constantly harassed about its responsibilities to wildlife, habitats and special areas of conservation by enthusiastic people with clipboards, yet this situation of widespread devastation could have been avoided with better approaches. One such approach is related to the destocking of commonage that started in 1998. The real experts on the environment in rural areas are our farmers. Wherever there was stocking on land, wherever grazing had not been taking place, the impact was much less. Wherever there was a shortage of stock, it was more profound. That is a key issue. I know it is not the responsibility of the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, but I would like him to speak to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to see if this can be reviewed.

I join Deputy Doherty in commending the heroic actions of our firemen throughout the State, of the Defence Forces and, most importantly, local volunteers who would not have the skills required to do this job. The enthusiasm and the determination to assist was clear throughout Donegal and across the State.

There are also examples in some parts of the State of approaches taken by the emergency services that seemed to be more successful than approaches taken in other parts. There needs to be a complete review by the relevant Departments of lessons learned from this. Another point made is the impact of the frost, which created the circumstances that allowed the exceptional amount of gorse fires to continue.

I endorse Deputy Doherty's call for a co-ordinated emergency response to be deployed to situations like these in the future, and to pre-empt them as much as possible. We also need to deploy the same resources to the floods and to the frost. As a county councillor at the time, I have to say we were deeply disappointed with the approach of the previous Government to the crisis in the freezing temperatures. It was very slow and it took weeks to get off the ground. It is important that this Government does not repeat those mistakes. It has failed in its first test to co-ordinate the response nationally, and if it was not for local authorities, local firemen and local communities, this would have been much worse. It needs to be dealt with in an authoritative fashion. The Minister and his colleagues in the relevant Departments should sort this out. I think they should send a letter of congratulations on behalf of the Government to the local authorities and fire services, thanking them for their heroic efforts and reassuring them that they will have the supports necessary to do their job, including water tankers for the fire services. I also ask the Minister to consider the issue of destocking that has contributed to this and I remind him of the need for a better co-ordinated emergency response in the future.

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