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

I mentioned cycling because that is my personal experience, having spent 15 years bringing people around the country, often on the very boreens about which Deputy Ó Cuív was talking. It is not just for cyclists but for all tourists. It is not just tourists but that is not an insignificant issue. They love that sense on our roads. We have to be careful and manage them for road safety. That is why we have put in amendments. There is a difficulty in that there are so many grouped amendments. Our amendment No. 18 sets out exactly how that could be done. If road safety is our intention in hedgerow cutting, let us put the resources into it and do it properly rather than having a free-for-all, which the Minister is allowing.

With regard to the burning on the uplands, I talked to rangers and asked if it would be okay because I was interested in what was happening up there. They said that I was fine where I was. They did not have a particular problem. I was conscious of safety and not worsening their difficult task but I am afraid the Minister's logic is fundamentally flawed. It seems to me that she is saying that we want to manage the burning better by extending the season. This comes after last year, when we had massive wildfires in Galway and elsewhere, which went from bogs on to forest, and burned and threatened houses. Our problem is that the traditional sense that people want to burn for scientific management of upland moors to get heather growth is not the reality of the world we are in.

We do not even have the farmers, the man and woman power, to manage in that very careful way what such a burning programme would be. The reality is that we have massive wildfires occurring in March, and to extend the season into that month is going to make it much easier for people to burn in March and for that to be in the public consciousness. That is what is going to happen. To dress that up as an advancement of heritage is illogical.

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