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

The way the amendments are ordered is almost as complicated as the Bill. I hope that we can do this in an iterative way because this deserves real attention and our forensic focus in what we are doing.

I had the privilege at the weekend of cycling down through Wexford and back up through Wicklow. There is nothing like cycling to get a sense of the countryside. What I got a sense of was a countryside under stress. Anyone who is involved in farming would know it, particularly in the south east.

I saw the hedgerows with plastic bottles littered everywhere but in the fields there were cattle standing in dry, dusty pasture and they were being fed from first cut silage and next winter's fodder without any sign of growth. It is a tough time for Irish farming and we need to make sure that they have a secure and healthy future. I will be honest in that it reminded me how wonderful this country is because of our hedgerows. I know there is an issue around road safety and we have to look after that but it is one of the spectacular things about nature in our country that unlike other countries we have hedgerows of quality. I hope Deputy Fitzmaurice does not mind me giving away what we said in a private conversation over tea, but as it happens we were just talking about his memory of growing up in the west where there would be a field with a five hedge system. They were told by all the Teagasc experts to get rid of them so that they would have a more productive system and then they realised that they lost the ability to manage floodwaters. The services the hedgerows provided were significant and real. That is why we bitterly and deeply oppose these provisions in this Bill. We feel that it risks a further degradation and deterioration in our hedgerow system.

In the latter part of my journey, having cycled down as far as Ballymoney in Wexford I headed back up through Wicklow, up over the mountains by the Sally Gap and for the section for several miles between the Sally Gap and Kippure I was cycling through a burnt wasteland. The mountain was on fire. There was a 3 sq. km bog fire and it was spectacular in scale and size. Further on at the edge of Lough Bray Upper, a spectacular area which people know, the Air Corps were doing an incredible job trying to scoop water out of the lake and put out the fire. I talked to the rangers who happened to be there and they said that the problem is that the peat is so hot now that it is reigniting all of the time. It is almost self-reigniting. The fires must have been started as a result of human intervention and there are real questions around that. Maybe it was just my personal experience but to cycle for miles through a smoke filled, burnt environment reminded me that we have to be careful in what we do with our mountains.

One other change that has taken place since we last discussed this Bill is that RTÉ "Prime Time" programme which showed up the lack of enforcement of environmental regulations in this country and all of the reassurances the Minister has given on Committee Stage and in previous Readings count for nothing in my mind because if we cannot manage illegal dumps ten times the size of this room, how will we look after a nest? I have been provided with some figures since our discussion on this issue last week as to what we are doing in terms of enforcement of existing wildlife protection measures and the number of people who have been in breach of them and the answer is that nothing has been done. If burning on the mountain tops are looked at, again none of it is properly co-ordinated. It is promised that it will be done in a regulated and safe way but the evidence is the exact opposite. Whatever advantage that may come in certain circumstances where someone wants to cut back shrub or encourage grass or heather growth for a particular species, and there may be some advantage, that is not what is happening. We are burning land and then going back burning it again a few years later in a way that is destroying the environment. We are burning in environments where it fundamentally changes, distorts and destroys the environment and that will only get worse in an environment that is changing because of climate change. I mentioned the farmers at the very start because we need a national land use plan where we sit down with our farmers and work out in real detail what our plan is, what we will do, how we will create an income and how we will pay those farmers in the areas that are not advantaged by rich land and pasture, how will we pay them for the services they provide in helping us to manage floodwaters, in helping to provide biodiversity and in providing recreational value and assets.

That is what we should be doing. We should not allow burning in March and cutting of hedges in August. That is plain wrong. There are several of our amendments in that grouping but our first preference is to take out section 7 and recognise that the Bill does an acute disservice to our environment and should be stopped. There are various options in the amendments but if we insist on providing protection for road users, which is valid, our amendments make sure the Bill achieves that purpose. It is not a question of wholesale destruction of the environment. It is specific and forensic and achieves that objective.

The problem with the Bill is that it takes a wholesale "let it go, let them burn, let it be cut" attitude when the problem is not the people who want to maintain their fences and hedgerows and maintain the land properly. They can do that. In the off-peak periods they can cut hedges and manage the uplands. The problem with the hedgerows is people who do not do what they need to do. That needs local authority intervention and management. It does not need Fine Gael writing a blank cheque to slash every hedge in the country which I fear will happen as a result of this Bill.

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