Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I echo the previous three Deputies who have raised the problem we have in that we are identifying climate as a risk but any assessment of our response to it in either mitigation or adoption is not being taken seriously. I echo the calls for further debate in that regard.

I will suggest one other area which is missing from the document. The definition of risk, timescales and so on is dependent on the timeframe one is considering. However, it seems to me that we are facing an increasing risk in Ireland and across the world from the reduction of biodiversity that is occurring. It is a different risk and it may not be immediate but it is fundamental. We are seeing it in the loss of species in the seas, in the lost fertility of our soils and in the halving of the volumes of insect life in our country over the past 30 or 40 years. People might say that we can manage each on its own and that it is not a huge risk to the country but combined, when we continue to degrade our environment and allow it to get to a stage where it will not be able to recover, I argue it is the most fundamental risk. The climate issue is related because restoring wildlife will help us to manage climate in a variety of ways. Why is it that we do not include that sort of biological risk of the destruction of our environment, which is happening, included within the risks?

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