Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am just saying we will all get time.

I have been waiting some time to speak on the Heritage Bill. The idea this Bill, in particular section 7, is about road safety is a complete and utter fraud. If it were to do with road safety, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport would be putting it before the House, advised by the National Transport Authority and Road Safety Authority. That has not happened in this case. Instead, the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, who is meant to be protecting our heritage and rural affairs, disgracefully is using the guise of road safety to put a provision like this forward in the House.

The provisions put forward originally in the Seanad would have allowed hedge-cutting in August at a time when many birds are still using hedgerows to nest. The yellowhammer, which has a strong presence in County Meath, needs to be protected because it is endangered and still breeds in hedgerows during August. However, this Bill was brought in under the guise of road safety. We all put road safety first but there is no road safety issue in this case. We already have a Roads Act which allows for the cutting edges for the sake of road safety. There is no reason to change the law on the grounds of road safety.

On the first day of law school, one is told if a measure has to be changed, it is because there was a mischief or something was wrong with it. There is nothing wrong with the existing regulations in terms of road safety. Local authorities have full power and control to decide whether there is an issue of road safety that requires hedges to be cut. This Bill, as originally put forward in the Seanad, added nothing to that. It simply allows certain vested interests - these vested interests were very few because no farmer I asked was looking for this provision - to take over legislation and use road safety in a fraudulent way to essentially give free rein to hedge-cutting in August.

There was significant debate and ill feeling towards this legislation in the Seanad. There was also much debate in my party. I pay tribute to my colleague, Deputy Ó Cuív, who steered the debate in our party and nationally with the various interest groups lobbying on this. His proposal is welcome in that he wants to have a pre-legislative scrutiny hearing on Committee Stage where all interested groups can thrash through sections 7 and 8 to understand exactly what is involved and where we and the Department should go on this.

The Bill was originally introduced as a fraudulent measure with the claim road safety reasons required it. The fraud continued and got worse. After much debate in the Seanad, an amendment was fraudulently stuck in at the last minute of Report Stage which purported to deal with concerns raised in the Seanad. I understand that in the middle of the night, section 7 was amended and representations were given that this would resolve the issue that a large majority of Senators had raised. It has completely liberalised what was already an attempt at liberalisation of the position. I would love for the Minister to contradict me and tell I am wrong on section 7. I will be listening carefully to her reply on this.

As I see it, the new section 7 essentially removes the local authority as an arbiter of whether a road safety issue exists and makes the process self-regulatory. That is the fraud. That is certainly the legal advice others have received and it was certainly my reading of it when I read it originally. I was horrified when I read it. However, I am willing to listen to the Minister about this. I meet the IFA regularly. They are all really good people who contribute massively to this country's economy. Never once did this issue come up in all of my meetings with the IFA over many years. It was never brought to my attention that there was an issue with regard to hedges in August or any other time of the year or that there was a particular road safety concern that had to be addressed at any other time of the year. This was never brought up with me. Had it been brought up by the IFA, I would have considered it and looked at the issues, as I do with any legislation. I would have examined whether it was necessary before forming a view, but it was never raised with me. Rather than having the local authority be responsible for things under road traffic legislation, the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, utterly fraudulently in my view, is allowing the local authority to be taken out of the picture and for a self-regulatory regime to be put in place. If I am wrong on that, I will be delighted to be told that I am wrong and I will listen to and accept that, but I want all the interested parties to be listened to and their concerns addressed on Committee Stage in order that we get legislation that is necessary to protect our heritage, wildlife, farmers and road safety, if that is the agenda. If we are looking at protecting road safety in this legislation, I would rather it came from the Road Safety Authority and the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport. That is where it should come from.

I am not making the case that road safety should be of lesser importance. It should be of huge importance. I am not making the case that we should make life difficult for our farmers. We should make life as easy as possible for them. However, we had legislation relating to a closed season for years that was accepted by everybody and there were no issues. I said that nobody ever lobbied me about it, and if they want to lobby me that the closed season needs to be opened, let them come and make the case to me, but someone made the case to somebody in the Department over recent years. I do not really know who. Certainly when I rang one or two farmers, they said this might help, but for the ones to whom I spoke, it was a relatively marginal issue and was not the most important thing. I do not see how what is envisaged can be supported because we really have a crisis. The Minister has responsibility for and is in charge of protecting our natural heritage. That is her role in terms of this legislation, and we are doing a bad job of protecting our natural heritage. The number of curlews is dropping dramatically. The number of cuckoos has dropped dramatically. I doubt the Minister hears it but she might hear the cuckoo in parts of her constituency, particularly the eastern side and possibly the west of Cavan. The reason the number of cuckoos is falling is that nests are not available for cuckoos because the number of those birds is declining as well.

We have a huge issue in this country. In my experience, farmers are the biggest supporters and are the most understanding and knowledgeable about biodiversity and species, but the understanding, expertise and sympathy for our natural heritage farmers and organisations like BirdWatch Ireland, which I very much support, have along with all these groups and people living in rural Ireland are not demonstrated by the Department and Minister in any way, shape or form. This legislation has been changed significantly. It has been shown that there are substantial concerns and opposition but there is also substantial willingness for everyone to work together for the common objectives. Yes, we all want road safety. Everybody on every side of this debate has said that. Everybody wants to protect our biodiversity and natural heritage. Everybody wants to make sure our farmers have the best possible shot at producing the crops we need to feed ourselves and that farmers need to pursue farming, so everybody agrees on those broad principles. What Deputy Ó Cuív is proposing, which is that everybody gets together on Committee Stage to see how we all work together to see how best to deal with all of these issues, is really important.

I will be totally honest. Burning is not an issue to which I have given huge consideration personally. It does not happen too much around where I live but there were some high-profile cases this year that caused angst. They were illegal fires that caused people who live in the area and people all over the country angst, not just because of the inconvenience and the massive road safety concerns caused by large-scale burning during the legal closed season but also because the people worry about biodiversity. Deputy Fitzmaurice spoke very interestingly last night. Yes, he was standing up for rural Ireland. We all want to stand up for rural Ireland and we do so. I represent a constituency that is half rural and half urban, so I see both sides of the story. However, Deputy Fitzmaurice seemed to think that this was a case of NGOs - do-gooders, as he called them - trying to interfere with the way rural Ireland has always worked. Yet in all of what was essentially claptrap from Deputy Fitzmaurice, there was a golden nugget where he said that everybody should get together about burning and that local groups should be established to see how burning could be done safely to protect our biodiversity. As I understand it, this is very similar to what BirdWatch Ireland has been saying so I think there is a huge opportunity for voices as apparently diverse as those of Deputy Fitzmaurice and the NGOs in the biodiversity sector to come together to work out the best possible solution to this matter.

I do not normally speak so passionately about many of these issues but I am passionate about protecting our biodiversity and I believe I represent a substantial portion of the population of this country, both rural and urban, to which the Minister should listen. This is something we believe in and value, something we see we are losing, and something we must protect and must urge the Government to protect. There is huge potential on Committee Stage to work this out together. I do not believe the amendment thrown in at the last minute in the Seanad was that but, as I urge the Minister to do, I am willing to listen and accept the exact legal position when that is through.

I know the European Commission has been notified about requirements for the habitats directive and the birds directive. They are serious issues that have been brought up by serious people and of which the Minister must have due cognisance. It is hard to believe how an amendment brought in on Report Stage relating to the new section 7 could have been analysed for compliance with European law. There is no possible way it could have been analysed to the exact level of detail required to make it compliant with the birds directive and the habitats directive. It is really important that it is compliant because we do not want this country to be subject to fines. We do not want hassle forever more after the Minister leaves office because someone did not dot an i or cross a t or because we did not all work together in this House with the NGOs, the IFA and even the contractors' association, which seems to have a strong interest in it, along with the Road Safety Authority and the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport. Everybody should get together and try to work out a common solution to this. That is what Deputy Ó Cuív is proposing, which is something I very much value. Deputy Ó Cuív has steered a very moderate course on this Bill. There are many different voices here, but in response to Deputy Fitzmaurice, there are things that everybody is saying and it is up to us in this Parliament to distil them and work out a common approach in order that we can come up with something everyone can support and that can protect farmers, road safety, our really important biodiversity and the natural heritage for which the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is responsible.

If Deputy Breathnach is ready and has enough time, I will share the remainder of my time with him.

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