Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps I could have a certain leniency.

I welcome the opportunity to speak and pay tribute to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, on this review and on his dedication, hard work and commitment. The programme for Government promised the review, and we have it. What is under discussion today is the strategic plan, which is based and arises from a report on the National Parks and Wildlife Service carried out by Professor Stout and Dr. Ó Cinnéide. I am not sure why it was necessary but that was followed by Reflect and Renew - A Review of the National Parks and Wildlife Service but, in any event, we have the three documents now. I found it difficult not to be depressed in reading the review. I looked for hope and the hope is that the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, has put in plan before us. The emphasis will have to be on implementation.

I will quote a tiny bit from this. I read every single word of it and so has my staff. Let me just try to put it into context. It states, "Our overall conclusion, based on the weight of evidence, is that is time for change ... Ireland’s natural environment, including its biodiversity, is in trouble. It is time for fundamental reform." It also states, "We are in the midst of a global crisis. Nature is our life-support system..." This is here for everybody to read but the statistics of loss are shocking. It states that 75% of the land of the earth is very significantly altered by human activity, 66% of the world’s oceans are experiencing increasing cumulative impacts and so on. It states also that today human population and livestock comprise 96% of global mammal biomass and that 70% of birds alive in the world are poultry, mostly chickens, which is an extraordinary statistic, and that the risk of continued damage to global biodiversity is the collapse of ecosystems, including those agricultural systems that produce food; the lack of capacity to buffer and reverse climate change; and the increased global health risks, including further pandemics. I suggest that everybody reads this. The three reports have finally been produced following decades and decades of neglect.

Let us look at the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which was set up in 1991, more than 30 years ago. If any organisation was set up to fail, this one was. I want to pay public tribute to the 400 staff throughout the country in 32 locations in 19 counties. I do not know how they have continued with years of neglect and underfunding. None of these are my words. These are the words of Micheál Ó Cinnéide. I would not think he was a radical, nor Professor Stout. Micheál Ó Cinnéide has been long part of the establishment and a respected individual. What he said here is absolutely damning. We ignore it at our peril.

Let me read what they said on funding, and this is directly from the report. There is chronic underinvestment. It stated, "The NPWS is inadequately resourced to function to deliver its remit." It was particularly hit by the 2008 financial crisis, after which there was a 70% reduction in funding. This underfunding persisted, unchanged, until 2020. Even the turf compensation fund, which was very welcome, had to come out of the National Parks and Wildlife Service budget, without any additional funding. In addition, over the years, while under-resourcing and underfunding it, we increased its remit, giving it an absolutely impossible job.

I will go back to statistics on the environment globally, followed by statistics on Ireland. As I said, 70% of birds alive are poultry. Can one imagine that? That is what we have come too – mostly chickens. Some 75% of the land of the earth is very significantly altered and, as I said, 66% of the oceans. Specifically on Ireland, about 75% of Ireland’s landscape is intensively managed – 65% agricultural land and 10% forestry. According to Ferdia Marnell of the National Parks and Wildlife Service at the first meeting of the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity in May, most of Ireland’s biodiversity in the other 25% is shoved into a corner. Some 85% of Ireland’s protected habitats were in an unfavourable condition and 43% of protected species were in an unfavourable status.

I am running out of time to give all of these statistics, but what really jumps off the page is, notwithstanding that we set it up to fail, that we set it up in complete opposition to the policy of the Government. While the National Parks and Wildlife Service is responsible for delivering on a range of national and international policies and agreements, these are implemented within a national policy context with a strategic focus on increased production and intensification. Therefore, one policy is completely and utterly at odds with the other.

I hope that finally language means something and we are now actually going to do something in respect of this. Different songs were quoted today, and I will quote, "It’s Now or Never". We have no further window of opportunity. We know that from the meteorological organisation and from the ongoing reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We can no longer stand here and stay we did not know. We can longer stand here and leave the National Parks and Wildlife Service to fail. It has taken a biodiversity crisis and a climate change crisis to make us examine the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

I have sat with Deputies where the National Parks and Wildlife Service was denigrated at a time when-----

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