Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In my opinion, heaven's garden on earth is our national park in Killarney. It is Ireland's oldest national park and covers 26,000 acres of mountains, lakes, woodland and heath. The nucleus of the national park is 4,300 ha. Unfortunately, a fire started there last Friday and lasted for three days. Between 2,500 and 3,000 ha are believed to have been damaged or destroyed in the fire, including an active hen harrier habitat and the hunting grounds of three or more of the extremely rare birds which live in the park. That is devastating for the ecosystem. It is the worst fire in the national park since 1984.

I thank Kerry County Council's fire service for the excellent work it did. I also thank the staff of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, the Air Corps, the Garda, Civil Defence and local emergency groups. I also thank local volunteers, those people who came out in places which I adore, such as the Black Valley. I also thank all the other organisations and local volunteers from the tourism and boating sectors. All these people rallied together to try to save our national park.

In a proactive rather than reactionary way, I went on the record of the Dáil seeking more resources to be given to the NPWS to manage our park. I will explain why. We all know it is a beautiful place but the national park is a living thing I am passionate about. Examples of what we need are more wildlife rangers and more workers on the ground to do the maintenance and repairs and undertake the care the park needs. A national park is a living and breathing thing. We cannot look at it, say it is beautiful and we have thousands of acres of it and conclude that all is fine and the park will mind itself. It does not mind itself. I know the Taoiseach appreciates good things, including the countryside. I respectfully ask him, as the Head of Government, to tell his Ministers to put the additional resources we need in place.

No one in Kerry, least of all me, was impressed when Ministers tried to make a photo opportunity of running down to Kerry and standing on a rock in water trying to make out everything was great now that they were there. Why were they not there when I was looking for additional funding for the NPWS and when I said the number of wildlife rangers had fallen from ten or 12 to five and that at one time we had more than 100 people in total working in the national park? We will be down now to less than half that figure. We need resources and I am asking the Taoiseach to provide those resources.

See this speech in context