Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Tá an Comhaontas Glas go mór i gcoinne an Bhille seo mar is léir don dall go mbeidh impleachtaí gan aon mhaith ag eiceolaíocht na hÉireann agus cruthóidh an BilIe seo slad mór milltineach ar oidhreacht nadúrtha na tíre.

Just as my party colleague, Senator Grace O’Sullivan, opposed this Bill when it was before the Seanad, the Green Party will oppose it here. As far as the Green Party and the green movement is concerned, this legislation is anti-heritage and should be assigned to the scrap heap. Despite the hard work and justified concerns of many legislators from varied political backgrounds who vehemently opposed this Bill, the Minister persists on her mission to destroy our heritage.

I am taken aback that this Government and the Minister, Deputy Heather Humphreys, would call on us to sanction the destruction of our beautiful habitats, our indigenous wildlife and our natural heritage. I was hoping, more than expecting, that the wild fires which raged out of control over the past year would have woken up this Government and the heritage Minister to the scale, urgency and gravity of the problem. Upland areas across the nation have been set alight. We have watched in horror throughout this year as over 1,500 ha of forestry and 2,000 ha of bogland were devastated by fire in Connemara, as the lake at Gougánbarra glowed with the reflection of roaring flames. The fires have roared even closer to home in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown in Ticknock.

In just under two months, from 24 March to 22 May of this year, the Irish Wildlife Trust recorded 97 illegal wildfires in rural areas. Some 39 of these were in special conservation areas which are protected by EU habitats legislation. The current law and the penalties or sanctions imposed on those convicted of such destructive vandalism fail abysmally to protect Ireland’s heritage. However, instead of putting in place real disincentives, carrying out a real investigation into what happened and providing appropriate support to those affected by the forest infernos, the Minister’s sole response appears to be a determination to pass this anti-heritage slash and burn legislation.

Those who have helped destroy our forests can rest peacefully in their beds, knowing that this heritage Minister is not pursuing them for causing millions of euro of heritage destruction, and she is not putting in place emergency legislation or even an investigation to assure the hundreds of thousands of people who care about our heritage that those arsonists will face the full rigours of the law.

This has been a golden but clearly missed opportunity for the Minister to leave a real positive protective mark. Instead with this Bill she has chosen to travel in the opposite direction, fuelling the flames.

Currently upland burnings are restricted to the period from the start of September to the end of February. We should be working tirelessly to ensure that strictly controlled fires take place solely within this timeframe. Instead, with wanton disregard to both wildlife and public safety the Minister seeks to extend this inherently dangerous burning period, to enshrine in law the destruction of Ireland’s nature. I congratulate the Minister. Coming so fast on the heels of her recent decision to designate 46 of our prehistoric raised bogs as natural heritage areas, not to mention their obliteration as having any further benefit as crucial carbon sinks, it assures only one thing: that her heritage legacy will reap havoc for not just this generation or the next generations but for generations to come.

Burning outside of the current season jeopardises a vast array of wildlife. For many birds, such as the endangered curlew whose population is in decline, March is a month of nesting. This is the time when they establish their territories, create their nests and prepare for laying their eggs. Curlews are facing global extinction. Alex Copland of BirdWatch Ireland has said that there are only 125 pairs of curlews left in Ireland and that the Minister’s proposed change in the rules would be the last straw for curlews, that there would be too few left and they would die out. Fires at this time can eradicate future breeding and decimate already declining populations. It is saddening that the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, shows such scant regard for these creatures. However, I am delighted that it is not only the Green Party that sees this Bill for what it is. As long as protecting the environment is seen as the party policy concern and preserve of only one party nothing effective can happen. It is incumbent on us all, party and non-party, to protect our environment, to fight for it and to call out lazy, destructive pandering to a few who have no regard for the huge and far-reaching destructive consequences of such damaging legislation.

We need courageous leadership to face down vested interests in order to protect our heritage. Extending the burning season is not leadership. To put it in simple terms it is environmental sabotage.

The Minister does not seem content at destroying our uplands. She is also hell bent on attacking our hedgerows and the wealth of wildlife to which they are home. Our hedgerows act as linear forestry in Ireland. They provide feeding for birds, insects and mammals. They are integral to biodiversity, pollination, nesting and future feeding. Bumble bees and wild honey bees will also suffer by extending the permitted times to slash and cut down vegetation and flowering wild plants. The president of the Irish Beekeepers’ Association, Gerry Ryan, has said that:

allowing the destruction of vegetation in August would be devastating for Ireland’s bees. Clover and blackberries are still in flower. The bumble bees and honey bees need these blossoms and flowering ivy to build themselves up to survive the winter.

My colleague, Senator Grace O’Sullivan, with great cross-party and non-party support in the Seanad, challenged the extension by the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, of hedge-cutting season. After weeks of debate on the matter in the Seanad, the Minister slipped in an insidious amendment at the 11th hour. I congratulate the Minister and give her ten out of ten for consistency. This convoluted amendment effectively overrides all the work done by the Seanad to protect our environment and goes so far as to undermine the Wildlife (Amendment) Act 2000.

This Act stipulated strong oversight of any hedge cutting that takes place during nesting seasons on the grounds of health and safety. The Minister’s amendment, however, appears to remove this oversight, encouraging and ensuring that hedge cutting which is destructive to our environment will be a near free-for-all. It provides for no real monitoring and no disincentives for lawbreakers intent on wrecking and ruining nature.

And what about the concerns about the pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill? Was that scrutiny performed when the Bill was under consideration by the last Government? Has the Attorney General been asked to review the legislation in light of the amendments made on the final stages in the Seanad? These are questions which need to be answered. Was the Attorney General satisfied that the provisions of the Bill, and in particular those contained in section 8, would be in compliance with the strategic environmental assessment directive and the birds and the habitats directives? My party and I call on the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, to withdraw this Bill but I realise that my pleas, and the pleas of so many others who are not aligned at all to the Green Party, may fall on obstinately deaf ears. It seems as though the Minister is impervious to the criticisms of this Bill. It seems she is blind or immune to the destruction it will wreak on our countryside. It seems that, despite her ironic job title as Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, she is anything but pro-heritage. I regret to say she has demonstrated no care for the heritage of our nation.

The question for members of Fianna Fáil, therefore, is whether we can rely on them to help quash this Bill once and for all. Fianna Fáil has a real opportunity to be a party of Opposition. It has an opportunity to hold this Government to account and to safeguard and protect the future of the Irish countryside. I call on Fianna Fáil to seize that opportunity and to do right by this nation. The Fianna Fáil Party can, if it so desires, remove itself from the shackles of supply and confidence, as this has nothing to do with the supply and confidence deal and therefore it is free to do the right thing. In fact let us all, as Members of this House, set party politics aside and unite in opposition to this Bill in order to secure our nation’s natural beauty for the generations to come. Let new politics give this Government a deserved political bloody nose by binning its proposed charter to destroy our environment. We must stop this Bill in its tracks because the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, is on a mission to destroy our heritage. She is a Minister for heritage who has only shown disregard and disrespect to our heritage, our wildlife and our biodiversity. With this Bill she holds the match with which she will set our country’s wildlife aflame. Mo náire thú.

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