Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Last week I raised the matter of the forest fires that raged in Connemara all that week. I wish to pay tribute to the staff on the ground, the Air Corps, the Army, the Garda, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the staff of Coillte and muintir na háite iad fein. However, when I raised the matter last week, I got a five-page response from one of the Minister of State's colleagues and the only reference to Galway in it was that "we are aware that the fires are burning".

The extent of the fire was extraordinary. I understand the Minister of State visited the area this week and witnessed the aftermath of the fire where the green cover has been turned to brown and black. The Cloosh Valley has the largest forest in Ireland, as the Minister of State is aware, which covers 4,000 ha. Almost a quarter of it has been destroyed as well as 2,000 ha of bogland. When the fire raged, it raged on three fronts and one of them extended across 8 km.

It affected wildlife, the forest itself and bogland, and it constituted a major threat to family life.

In that context, although it was not the responsibility of the Minister of State, there was an indication that the Government was either not aware of or not taking seriously what was going on in Galway on that extensive area of land and the destruction of the forest. First, there was the threat to human life, and second, there was the absolute damage to wildlife and trees. There is the cost of that and losing mature timber, as well as what it will cost to replace all this. From listening to a contribution from the citizen science project on the radio, it seems the pollution levels were on a par with those in Beijing. The only difference is that it will not last, whereas Beijing, unfortunately, has an ongoing problem. The pollution was equal to that in Beijing, where people wear masks.

I thank the Minister of State for visiting the area this week but I expected somebody to go down sooner. A warning has been issued to the area, which is welcome, as nobody should be lighting fires, particularly illegal fires. However, there is a bigger problem and questions must be asked about how this got out of control. What risk assessments have been done by Coillte, as within the biggest forest in the country we have the biggest wind farm? The feeling on the ground - I am reporting what was said - was that some of the effort went to preserving that rather than controlling the fire elsewhere.

In the past ten years there have been very few prosecutions in this area. If my figures are correct, there were nine prosecutions over ten years. The Minister of State will deal with the issue of the prosecutions but I am asking a more general question. When will the Minister get a report on what caused the fire and what has been learned from it? No matter what we do, we will always have people who light fires when they should not. There must be an emergency plan in place and proper risk assessment. When will that report come before us, telling us the damage, replacement plans and timescales? Most of all, it must inform us how we can prevent this happening in future. That is the most important lesson to be learned from this.

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