Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy will forgive me if I am not familiar chapter and verse with BusConnects. However, there is an increasing awareness in society generally and in public bodies of the requirement to do the right thing by the environment. Broadly speaking, I have found local authorities to be aware of tree management in urban settings. Sometimes the awareness is not communicated in terms of the rationale behind some of the interventions they make.

On hedgerows, the climate action plan commits to ensuring local authorities extend hedgerow surveys nationwide. When these are completed in 2020, the Government will commission a study to quantify the climate change mitigation and adaptation potential of this resource by 2021. The Deputy is right that we are concerned that we are missing our afforestation targets and anxious to make more progress in that area in the context of the next Common Agricultural Policy because afforestation is a critical element of that.

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