Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The amendment says that it is in the interests of public safety and air safety, to prevent serious damage to crops, livestock, forests, fisheries and water. All of the voices I have heard articulated so far are represented in my amendment. My amendment represents what the Deputies want to achieve, it just does so in a manner which protects the environment.

The Minister spoke about the fact that we are only dealing with a fraction of the environment but it is a fraction of a collapsing environment. We are dealing with a narrowing and reducing environment and ecosystem and the Minister's Bill reduces that even further. The Government's record on the environment is abysmal. We are laggards in Europe on this. In Britain, for example, last year they created more solar power than they did through nuclear and coal. This country does not even have a solar power system, we do not have feed-in tariffs or renewable heat incentives. This Government talks the talk on environment but is worse than the Tories in Britain on it.

I suggest to the Minister that instead of seeing two sides pitched against each other, the Minister should bring together the interested parties in farming, heritage and road safety at some point in the future and get them to sit down together to work out a way of resolving this in sympathy and in partnership with each other. It can and should be done. These amendments do exactly that.

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