Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will probably take it all.

In many ways it is strange to call this Bill a Heritage Bill. It seems to me to facilitate the eradication and destruction of certain elements of Irish heritage. There are a number of parts to the Bill, including provisions on canals and the burning of vegetation on uncultivated land, as well as changes to the laws protecting National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers. I will focus for the most part on the issue of hedgerows.

There are no positive actions for wildlife in section 7 and section 8 of the Bill. BirdWatch Ireland argues that several red-listed birds, including the curlew and yellowhammer, would be severely negatively impacted by the proposed changes in the Bill. In Ireland, the curlew has experienced an 80% decline since the 1970s and is threatened with extinction globally. The yellowhammer population in Ireland has collapsed. Burning in March will destroy curlew occupied nesting territories and those of other upland birds. The yellowhammer is a red-listed bird due to a staggering 90% decline in breeding population as part of an 11-year to 14-year trend. The yellowhammer uses hedgerows for nesting and was once a common enough sight on telephone wires in rural Wexford. One would do very well to spot one these days in Wexford or anywhere else in the country. According to BirdWatch Ireland, 5% of yellowhammer nests are still active at the end of August. Active means the nests still contain unfledged young. The changes proposed in the Bill will contribute to increasing the already massive contraction in the yellowhammer population in Ireland.

The Bill flies in the face of the all-Ireland pollinator plan. This is at a time when one third of all Irish bee species are threatened with extinction. Bees pollinate many of our crops, such as oilseed rape, apples, peas, beans, strawberries and raspberries. In a 2013 journal article, Dr. Dara Stanley from the National University of Galway and Dr. Jane Stout of the school of natural sciences at Trinity College Dublin, stated that the value of insect pollination of crops to the Irish economy is estimated to be €53 million per year. The World Wildlife Fund 2016 report says that changes in the timing of life-cycle events in nature mean that hundreds of plant and animal species are beginning to respond to an earlier spring. We know that since 1970, the number of wild animals on the planet has dropped by more than half and by 2020 it is expected to drop by two-thirds. We have animals and birds changing and expanding the structure and timings of their life-cycles, due to global warming. The more vibrant periods of wildlife activity are encroaching further into non-traditional times of the year and the Government is proposing not to acknowledge this development, but to double down and make the timeframe in which we are liable to destroy them even longer.

No scientific rationale has been proposed for the changes proposed in the Bill. For example, burning has limited value as a land management tool. The changes are proposed as a two-year pilot programme covering all 26 counties. Not only is this poor legislation, but it is also poor in terms of scientific methodology. What is the proposed control area for the experiment? If all of the 26 counties will serve as the experimental group, then what does the Bill propose to use as the control group to which the experimental group might be compared? How on earth will this so-called pilot period and its success or otherwise be monitored? The National Parks and Wildlife Service is already chronically under-resourced and so far no extra resources have been promised.

Fianna Fáil got an amendment to the Bill when it was going through the Seanad which would exclude internal hedgerow cutting in August. Fianna Fáil, the Green Party, Independents, Sinn Féin and Labour were all against section 7 and section 8 of the Bill in the Seanad. I hope their positions will be the same here. It is important to acknowledge that tillage farmers have concerns about the cutting of internal hedgerows, as opposed to road-facing hedgerows, specifically those tillage farmers who grow winter barley. It was mentioned during one of the Seanad debates on the Bill that farmers who grow winter barley account for 4% of the farming community. If this figure is accurate, then perhaps a special provision might be made for these particular farmers. Of course, this should be balanced with the need to maintain biodiversity.

The Bill also appears to pose problems with Ireland's EU greening payments for farmers. It may very well weaken the case for funding for farmers in the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, as part of the Common Agricultural Policy.

Regarding burning on the uplands and lowland hills, as Oonagh Duggan of BirdWatch Ireland in a recent Oireachtas Retortinterview argued, we need a strategy for upland management with hill farmers at its core, farming with nature in mind. Many of our upland birds are red-listed for conservation concern. They are on their way out, as is hill farming. We need to think creatively about how we can support and care for both environmental farming and the environment itself. However, the law on illegal burning must be enforced.

Using freedom of information requests, the Irish Wildlife Trust found that 57 wildfires took place across the country this year. Almost all took place in March and April, the period when burning is illegal. Over half the wild fires were in designated areas of conservation, including two national parks, Killarney National Park and the Wicklow Mountains National Park. According to freedom of information requests, however, the Irish Wildlife Trust found no one has lost out on a single farm payment and no farmer was penalised in 2016 under cross-compliance rules. I stand to be corrected if I am wrong on this last point.

Road safety is at the heart of the argument for the need to amend the Wildlife Act with this Bill. Vegetation impinges on road safety. Obviously, it is important and necessary to improve visibility on roads and reduce hazards. Road safety should be the most important issue. If I might presume to speak on behalf of BirdWatch Ireland, the Federation of Irish Beekeepers, the Irish Wildlife Trust and others who briefed Members recently, neither I nor any of these groups is ignoring road safety.

If a hedge needs to be cut to make a road safe, the hedgerows on that particular road should be cut at any time of the year. However, there is absolutely no reason hedgerow cutting should be taking place in the so-called "closed period". If hedgerows are properly managed throughout the year, this simply would not be necessary. At the recent briefing organised by Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, this was made absolutely clear in response to questions raised by Deputy Danny Healy-Rae. Nobody should argue roads should remain unsafe. However, that does not mean that road safety concerns should not, or cannot, be balanced with concerns with biodiversity.

Hedgerow cutting needs to be done according to best practice. It needs to be regulated and there needs to be accountability. The Heritage Bill is dependent on voluntary action. It will not compel landowners to cut the necessary overgrowth that is actually causing road safety problems. The proposed changes permit, but do not compel, landowners to cut hedges during August. This means that the main road safety issue, namely, landowners who fail to comply with their obligations under section 70 of the Roads Act, is not addressed. The biggest problem with the excessive growth of roadside vegetation is not landowners who want to cut hedges and cannot. Rather, the issue is with those landowners who should cut their hedges and do not do so. The proposed changes in this Bill do nothing to address this problem.

Another problem is that road safety issues during August, according to the provisions of section 8, would be self-defined by landowners. The aim of section 7(2) is to allow regulated cutting in August. This would in fact be nullified or invalidated by section 8. Instead of the Road Safety Authority defining road safety, it will now be the landowners who decide with no regulation and no answerability to the Minister. This would make a mockery of the very idea and purpose of cutting seasons.

My constituency, Wexford, has been a national leader in promoting biodiversity in terms of hedgerows through its Life Lives on the Edge programme. The aim of this project is to maintain roadside vegetation at various pilot sites in the county. The aim is to achieve biodiversity without neglecting road safety or infrastructural maintenance objectives. Wexford is a biodiversity model for the rest of country. The project co-ordinator in Wexford County Council, Niamh Lennon, deserves special praise for her work in developing the project. The rest of the country can learn much from the success of this Wexford project.

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