Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

What research has been done to ensure that burning in the uplands in March will not damage bird habitats as a background to introducing this measure in this Bill? The answer is none. Under the birds directive, the Minister is required to safeguard the habitats of these birds but she is introducing a measure which potentially endangers them without doing the necessary background research, when the precautionary principle should apply before she takes a measure like this. She has not done the research and is endangering bird life as a consequence.

In response to Deputy Fitzmaurice, I accept the point that people who live and work on the land know much more about these things than those of us who do not. He should also accept that there is a biodiversity problem which represents a significant danger to everybody, including farmers, and our ability to continue to produce crops and indeed to hold the environment on which all of us, farmers most of all, depend. There is tension between certain types of land use by certain forms of agriculture and the concerns about maintaining biodiversity, enhancing afforestation, hedgerows and so on. We need to overcome that tension. We need to work with farmers to do so and we need to give them supports, incentives and so on to be guardians of biodiversity. It is not helpful to attack city slickers as people who do not give a damn about the livelihoods or concerns of farmers. We should not get into that game. We should recognise that there is a genuine problem with the degradation of biodiversity, bird life, bees and so on, and that we all have an interest in protecting them. This Bill will not do that but will degrade biodiversity.

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