Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am speaking as a member of the Fingal walkers. What is remarkable in walking all of the land of north County Dublin, which we have been doing on and off for 20 years, is the massive destruction of hedgerows and the development of super-large fields for grain growing in which there are no trees or hedgerows and everything has been chopped down to a height of 6 ft. The Taoiseach and I have knowledge of the area. It is clear that this may in the future be the pattern in the rest of Ireland. Farmers must try to make a living and they should be strongly supported by the Government in doing so but we have a problem with biodiversity. Last year, there were very bad fires in the forests around Killarney that resulted in significant destruction of trees and wildlife. In north County Dublin and, presumably, a lot of north Leinster, the EU is paying farmers to cut down hedgerows to make these very large fields, thereby completely destroying a significant percentage of the hedgerows, which are natural biodiversity corridors because, as has been stated, we do not have massive indigenous forests. We hope to have these but we do not have them at present. As the leader of the country, will the Taoiseach have a look at this matter in the context of how to address it? Obviously, the farmers' interests must be taken into account but so must our commitments in respect of biodiversity.

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