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

I am not telling the Minister what to bid; I am asking that she makes a bid. I understand the value for money proposition, which any Minister has to take into account. However, to have no bid and no interest is, to my mind, a real missed opportunity.

I want to draw the Minister back to the key question. Let us put the national monument aside, although it is spectacular, and focus on the ecology. The island, the birds on it, the monitoring of them and the management of the island to assist that, could be a critical part of our understanding of what is happening in the ecology of the north Atlantic. In a world where climate change is changing weather systems, feeding systems and bird life systems in the north Atlantic, that is not an insignificant issue. The populations there are not small; they are huge and hugely important.

On that one issue alone, we should give the National Parks and Wildlife Service a real management capability. I know the island is isolated and hard to get to. However, I know the NPWS would love to have that sort of site within its portfolio and we would show we are interested in what is happening in the north Atlantic. We could then go to the Scottish Government and say we have a real interest because we are engaged and because we are active in managing that whole system.

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