Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

It is long past time that we had an organisational overhaul of our approach to national parks and the wildlife of the State. The natural beauty of this landscape is not being protected and has not been historically. What could have been a great ecological and economic resource has lacked the care and maintenance it desperately needs. The health of our biodiversity is the key to our well-being. It is a symbiotic relationship on this planet. The health of the natural world and of society are tied together in a three-legged race. For decades, they have not been in sync. More than 40% of insect species are declining and one third are endangered internationally. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by 2.5% each year, according to available data. That is an incredible collapse of significant elements of the biodiversity of this State. We need, as a country, to tackle that problem head-on.

The first thing to remember is that we need partnership on this. If we do not do it in partnership, it will create significant resistance. The people who are first and foremost in that partnership are farmers and communities in rural Ireland. If farmers are not treated as partners in this area, it will create resistance and opposition. For farmers to be treated as partners, it is important that they can make a living and are able to fund raising a family. If this is not the case and farmers are hammered economically, there will be a major difficulty in the area.

I will give a couple of examples of the manner in which not to proceed. The Government's policy for sustainable energy historically has been to outsource large industrial-scale wind farms to national companies, which have come into local communities without leaving any benefit to them and built these industrial-scale wind turbines right up against people homes. That has created massive resistance. Instead, the Government could have followed the German model which allowed for communities to get the funding to build wind turbines of their own design in their own areas, get profit from those turbines and benefit from them.

The Government's response to turf is another example of building resistance in communities. Instead of working with families on retrofitting houses that are dependent on turf fires, the Government went in with the ban straight away. I appeal to the Green Party to understand the sensitivities and needs of rural Ireland in terms of being able to make a living and raise a family. It is extremely important. If it goes wrong, it will create further resistance. The NPWS has not been funded or staffed properly and its structures have held it back in the past. The NPWS has not worked with farming communities in the manner it should have and that needs to change.

We in Ireland see the country as having a green and wild landscape but that is a significant distance from reality. We have only six national parks in the country. Connemara, Killarney, Glenveagh, Wicklow and the Burren are some of those. We have no protected landscapes. Germany has 400 protected landscapes. We compare very unfavourably to other European countries. We should be more ambitious in terms of biodiversity. We should be increasing the allocation of land to those parks and looking at the whole area of rewilding. Rewilding has unquantifiable benefits for biodiversity and our habitats and counteracts significantly the emissions created by society.

The Knepp Castle Estate in England is an example of what can be done. This large estate was an industrial-type and intensive farm until 2001. It was not making a profit because the land was in a bad state. It decided to revolutionise, change direction and devote itself to rewilding. It did so in an incredible manner. At very little cost, it allowed hedges, shrubs, trees and bushes to grow of their own volition. It stopped using pesticides and other elements on the land and allowed cattle, ponies, pigs and deer to roam freely. They drove the regeneration of the land and created a mosaic of habitats from grasslands to scrub, open-grown trees and wood pasture. As a result, there has been an extraordinary increase in wildlife. Species such as turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are breeding there. Populations of other common species are also rocketing. That revolution cost little, was highly effective and produced profitable results for this failing landscape. They are producing high quality meat that achieves a better price at market and are allowing for camping, glamping, safaris and other business rentals. Surrounding pubs, shops and bed and breakfasts have benefitted from the economic spin-off from that.

This is not a project for every farm but in relation to diversification, which is important in agriculture at the moment, it is an option that should be supported more by the State. I am thinking of the Dunsany estate that operates in my great county of Meath and the work Randal Plunkett has done there. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to visit Randall and see the rewilding of the estate a number of times in recent years. The level of biodiversity that has returned to the hundreds of acres that Randal is rewilding is incredible. It has increased significantly the level of interest in his farm.

He allows academics and students from universities to come to study the results of that rewilding. I do not believe any Minister has visited that rewilding project even though it is the biggest one in the State at the moment. I encourage the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, who is present, to do so if he has a chance.

Obviously, such projects are not for every farm across the country, but I believe we can consider smaller farms too. We can incentivise farmers to increase the biohabitats that exist on their farms. For far too long, the European Union and the State incentivised the damaging of biohabitats. Farmers were told to get rid of scrub, wetland and non-productive land but we should actually be encouraging them to keep such land. We should be paying for farmers to do that.

A policy that we in Aontú have held for several years relates to changing the sward. I am delighted the Government has taken that policy on board. We have depended on ryegrass, which needs significant industrial fertilisers to keep it going, for so long instead of allowing clover and other plants to flourish within the sward, which results in nitrogen being taken from the air and put into the ground.

I urge the Government to consider riverine parks. When cities grow in Canada, urban development is prohibited for 500 m on both sides of rivers so that those rivers remain as parks in the middle of large urban areas that can be enjoyed by families.

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