Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The science here is not in doubt. We have countless reports to tell us how important biodiversity is, how threatened it is, the consequences of a continuation of the destruction of biodiversity for humanity and this planet, and even what to do to protect it. The issue is not that we do not know what to do. The problem is the political will and economic interest to do it. The appalling lack of political will from successive Irish governments around biodiversity is shown in the damning verdict of the citizens' assembly. In its second recommendation the assembly states as a matter of fact that the State has comprehensively failed to adequately fund, implement, and enforce the existing national legislation, national policies, EU biodiversity-related laws and directives on biodiversity. This is why one third of Irish species are threatened with extinction. This is why 85% of our supposedly protected habitats have bad or inadequate status.

Unfortunately, that lack of political will shows very little sign of changing under this or potential future governments. Only this week in the European Parliament, MEPs from Fine Gael and Sinn Féin voted against the crucial nature restoration law. They could have fought for a massive, long-term nature restoration fund that would guarantee a comfortable standard of living for small farmers to become custodians and restorers of biodiversity and to farm in ecologically sustainable ways. We have a massive surplus after all. Instead they caved, like they always do, to big business and the big farmer lobbying from the IFA and the agrifood industry, and they voted to sacrifice biodiversity completely on the altar of profit.

The Green Party in government has been ineffectual in countering this. Under the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan's, neoliberal managerialism we get shedloads of plans, targets and strategies but zero actual action whenever it comes into conflict with capitalism, which is all the time. It was revealing that the only Government speaker so far today not in the Green Party was Deputy Bruton, and his main point was to say we cannot be adopting targets that are unrealistic, not to recognise that science sets the targets and we must drive through the targets and actually achieve them, and he said we should ditch the targets. The only force that can stop this never-ending doom loop is an active, mass environmental and eco-socialist movement that actually challenges ecocidal capitalism.

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