Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Happy Biodiversity Week everyone. It is significant that today this House is debating the topic of biodiversity action - not loss, but action - because that is what this Government is focused on. In 2019, the Dáil declared a climate and biodiversity crisis. The 2020 programme for Government contained stronger commitments for nature than any that came before it. Since becoming Minister of State with responsibility for natural heritage, which includes the birds directive, the habitats directive, the Wildlife Act, invasive alien species regulations, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the national biodiversity action plan, I have made tackling the issue of biodiversity, the factors driving its loss and the actions required to halt or reverse that loss my number one priority.

Before I summarise the key components of that work, I will take a moment to acknowledge the scale of the disaster we face. A total of 85% of our most rare and valuable habitats are in an unfavourable condition. Our gorgeous coastal dunes, panoramic mountain heaths, beautiful orchid-rich grasslands and soggy alluvial woodlands are all in trouble. An incredibly shocking statistic is that 30% of Ireland's species-rich grasslands have been lost in the past ten years. These are amazing places. Almost two thirds of our wild birds are at risk of extinction: our puffins, barn owls, kingfishers, kestrels and even starlings, swallows, sparrows and mallard ducks. One third of wild bee species are becoming extinct. Half of our rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters are in an unsatisfactory condition polluted with fertilisers and wastewater with the life taken out of them with weirs, culverts and dredging. This week, researchers from Queen's University Belfast published a paper that found that populations of almost half the world's animals are decline. This includes many that were previously thought to be safe.

So what are we doing? When we are in the countryside, we look over a lush green landscape and can be forgiven for thinking that all is well but it is not. Too often, the colour we see all around is a kind of camouflage - chemically altered and physically enhanced to maximise production at the expense of the wildness such production depends on. "Dependence" is the key word here. We seem to focus our impact on nature on the wider environment. We think about our footprint but we should really be thinking about what our hand print is - the palm and fingers outstretched to receive the food, water, air and other fundamental ecosystem services that our increasingly vulnerable species relies on to survive. Sometimes I think we forget that we are animals.

This is not the fault of the farmer, the fisher, the forester or even the suburban commuter, young people, old people, the rich or the poor. It is the fault of an outdated and unfit for purpose multi-decade policy direction that holds two contradictory positions in fractious and discordant harmony. One holds nature as something to be celebrated in our songs, stories, art or folklore as a source of great wonder and something bigger, older and more powerful than us. The other frames it as an obstacle to development and something to be grubbed out, mown down, chopped up, drained away or dug out in pursuit - paradoxically - of growth. Reconciling these two positions is the challenge of our generation. We need a new economic paradigm - one where ecosystem services are factored in and environmental destruction is not seen as an externality.

The work in government has begun but it will be for those coming after us to continue it because it is the kind of change that cannot be delivered within an election cycle. This is precisely why we need measures like the nature restoration law, which is a proposed regulation from the EU that has been the subject of much public discussion in recent weeks. I would argue that much of the public narrative has brought more heat than light to the matter with fear whipped up and misunderstandings bandied about. It is deeply disappointing that so many Irish MEPs have opted to reject it outright rather than amend and improve it as I and my colleagues across Government are seeking to do. I understand time will be made next week for a deep debate on the topic and I look forward to the opportunity to clarify the Government’s position in detail. In the meantime, let me say that notwithstanding the challenges any such far-reaching legislation brings, Ireland welcomes the nature restoration law not least because the provisions it contains will help us to tackle the multifaceted and deeply disturbing erosion of the web of life but also because people depend on nature and restoring it brings enormous value economically, socially and culturally.

This much is clear when we look at the results of work undertaken since I became Minister of State in 2020 to protect, conserve and restore nature. I will take a moment to outline our progress to date. My most immediate task was resourcing. We increased National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, funding by 50% in 2021 and again in 2022 to pre-financial crisis levels. In 2023, we increased programme funding by 85% bringing the overall budget for nature of €90 million in 2023. Other measures included staff resourcing and a complete organisational restructuring underpinned by an additional €50 million investment. This investment has unlocked a wealth of potential that will see its value multiplied right across the country. While it is fundamental, resourcing would only take us so far. We also needed to look at governance so we reviewed the NPWS, developed a strategic action plan to renew it and dedicated €55 million to fund its transformation into an executive agency with a full organisational restructuring and dedicated management team. The strategic action plan for the renewal of the NPWS is on track and on target as a press release from the Department over the coming days will illustrate.

We also committed to reviewing nature governance in Ireland more broadly with a view to ensuring the coherence and effectiveness of the State’s response with regard to biodiversity and climate action across the many actors with responsibility in these areas. We progressed the citizens' assembly on biodiversity loss, which published its wide-ranging and transformative set of recommendations recently, and will give us much to consider in this House in terms of the big questions around nature in Ireland and its future.

Ensuring sufficient staffing across the NPWS was another key priority after too many years of under-provision. We have brought staffing back up to pre-2008 levels with around 400 staff members now employed in the NPWS. This includes 85 rangers with provision to increase the number to 120 by the end of this year. This is in addition to the prioritised recruitment of 60 additional staff members through my strategic action plan as well as a further commitment to address staffing in light of the restructuring.

On biodiversity policy, we are making strong progress in the areas on which the NPWS leads. This includes the new national biodiversity action plan, which will set the agenda for nature across Ireland to the end of this decade. While the NPWS co-ordinates it, it is an all-of-government and all-of-society plan with actions, implementation and delivery for a wide range of sectors and organisations. The plan is currently being finalised in my Department and will soon be presented at Cabinet. With the Government’s approval, we will be moving to publish it as soon as possible. It also includes substantial efforts to ensure the nature restoration law works for both nature and people involving intense and extensive cross-departmental engagement and strong collaboration between myself, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. We remain committed to this. We cannot restore nature without farming and farming will not thrive without healthy nature.

The water section of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is finalising the river basin management plan and is beginning the development of a national restoration plan for our rivers contributing to the European Commission’s target of having 25,000 km free flowing by 2030 through the removal of obsolete barriers and restoration of wetlands and flood plains.

Meanwhile, the marine environment section is progressing legislation on marine protected areas at a rapid pace to help us meet our target of 30% protection in the marine by 2030. We hope to bring the legislation to the Oireachtas before the summer recess. In the meantime, we have increased Ireland’s protected areas in the marine from 2.1% when we entered Government to 8.3% following the designation of two very large special areas of conservation under the habitats directive. There will be more to come.

We are also working hard at international level to support global efforts on biodiversity policy. Following extensive work with colleagues throughout the EU to support a strong and unified European position on the world stage, I represented Ireland in Montreal at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to agree the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. We also ratified the Nagoya Protocol and, earlier this year, we led the OSPAR agreement to create one of the world’s largest high seas marine protected areas for endangered seabirds, covering 600,000 sq. km. Furthermore, motivated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and our engagement at COP 26, we are progressing the concept of a European peatlands initiative along with others throughout the Continent. This initiative will support collaboration, knowledge sharing and co-ordination on peatlands conservation.

On legislation and enforcement, we are working hard to deliver on the wide-ranging programme for Government commitment to review protections and enforcement of legislation for natural heritage. We have redoubled efforts on wildlife crime, establishing a new internal approach, including a dedicated directorate, bolstering boots on the ground to tackle enforcement, and engaging on a memorandum of understanding with An Garda Síochána.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, has never been more focused or more effective on combating wildlife crime, and prosecutions have increased substantially. NPWS staff throughout the country successfully closed 32 wildlife crime prosecutions as of December 2022. This year, four cases have been closed to date and there are a further 63 on hand. We are bringing the Wildlife (Amendment) Bill back to the Oireachtas in the coming weeks. This will place a biodiversity duty on State organisations and give statutory teeth to the national biodiversity action plan. We have started a comprehensive review of the Wildlife Act and the birds and habitats regulations to make them stronger, improve deterrence and improve their enforcement. This is a seminal piece of work that will take a number of years. We are at the early stages but it is vital and we are determined to get it right.

As for our beautiful national parks and nature reserves, we have committed through the action plan to bringing legislation to clarify and underpin powers around their management. The legislation will provide updated and stronger statutory underpinnings for our national parks and the work of the NPWS in protecting and conserving threatened and endangered animals, plants and habitats in the State. We have also increased the resources available to them and restructured staffing within them as per the action plan.

Enormous efforts are under way in all six national parks to tackle the key pressures on habitat condition, namely, fire, overgrazing and invasive species, with management plans, new technologies and techniques, and strategies to address them all coming on stream. Learning and collaboration between the parks is also being improved. I saw this first hand on my visit to Killarney National Park last week. I am more hopeful than ever for the future of biodiversity in these incredibly special places. Just this week, the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and I launched a biodiversity restoration project across 2,000 ha in Glenasmole, the seat of the River Dodder which flows through Dublin. The public reaction to this was overwhelmingly positive. People want this and they want more of it.

Another key area for us is the delivery of measures to support the strategic management and conservation of Ireland’s EU-designated protected habitats. We have established a new dedicated conservation measures directorate that is underpinned by the necessary resourcing to deliver on our objectives under the habitats directive. Its work is already having an impact on protected habitats and species throughout the country. In addition, we are making great progress to restore protected peatlands, and the NPWS is a regulator on Bord na Mona’s 33,000 ha scheme to rehabilitate post-industrial cutaways.

To support this work and much more besides, we are also working to improve biodiversity data collection and management, as outlined in the programme for Government. The strategic action plan for the NPWS outlines a much-needed ICT modernisation strategy, which is just getting started and will continue over the coming years. This will underpin work throughout the entire organisation and beyond. We have also secured almost €34 million in EU co-funding for our blanket bog, corncrakes and machair programmes with farmers under the EU LIFE programme.

Anyone who works in this area knows that communities are at the heart of biodiversity conservation. This is why we are doing everything we can to support them as owners, managers and advocates for nature. Through our partnership with the Heritage Council, the County and City Management Association and the Local Government Management Agency, we are helping local authorities to equip themselves to respond to the biodiversity emergency in their areas and support the implementation of the national biodiversity action plan. There are now biodiversity officers in almost every local authority, which is a key programme for Government commitment.

We have grown the local biodiversity action fund to more than €2.7 million this year to support local authorities and communities on nature projects. Details of the successful projects will be released on Monday. We are also continuing our partnership with Community Foundation Ireland on the environment and nature fund, which support communities to work with ecologists to develop their own biodiversity action plans. We have also doubled funding for the community wetland forum, which is co-ordinated through Irish Rural Link. We have increased the peatland community engagement scheme allocation to €500,000. We have supported farming communities by massively increasing investment in the NPWS farm plan scheme to pay farmers to manage their land for nature. Our wild Atlantic nature LIFE project, which is targeted at improving the condition of blanket bogs, is growing and expanding. Just this week it announced payments amounting to €2.4 million to 820 farmers in the north west who are farming for nature. This is an average payment of €3,100 on top of regular incomes. This is an enormously valuable economic injection into this rural region.

Building on this community engagement, we know that we need to promote biodiversity at all levels of education and work with children and young people to ensure their voices are heard and are reflected in national policy. I commissioned what we believe is the world’s first children and young people’s assembly on biodiversity loss, a sister event to the main citizens' assembly. More than 40 young people spent two weekends learning about the challenges facing nature and delivered their recommendations to me. Their perspective on the value of nature is instructive in terms of what we as adults need to do now to protect it for future generations.

I am aware that while this work over the past three years has undoubtedly moved Ireland as a whole into a better place for nature, we need to go significantly further to meet the requirements under the EU biodiversity strategy, the proposed EU nature restoration law and the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. We have made good gains in catching up but we have to continue this at pace in and beyond the NPWS and beyond the Government if we are to deliver on our obligations for nature and achieve our wider ambitions. I am speaking to the Opposition specifically. If Opposition Members are in my position in the future, they will need to continue this trajectory. Addressing the legacy of a decade of neglect will take more than one term, and I am calling on them and all in the House to commit to building on the work the Government has done to turn the tide. The alternative does not bear thinking about.

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