Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing my time with Deputy Boyd Barrett.

People Before Profit also wishes to note the passing of Michael Viney. He is a great loss to the nation. Nature was his passion and he shared it with us both widely and wildly. He is already missed.

Having heard the statements on the biodiversity crisis and the proceedings of the various committee meetings on its scale and scope, I am not aware of any Deputy who has denied the scientific reports and research that state we are effectively experiencing the sixth mass extinction event. Let me repeat the main examples of what is actually happening in Ireland.

A third of all species examined in Ireland, including plants, butterflies, freshwater fish, dragonflies and sharks, are either threatened with extinction or near threatened. The 2019 report of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, on the state of Ireland's EU protected habitats and species showed that 85% of those habitats, including peatlands, were of bad or inadequate status. Almost 50 marine species of fish, shellfish, invertebrates and seaweed in Irish waters are under threat of extinction. The most recent BirdWatch Ireland assessment in 2021 showed that 63% of Ireland's 211 regularly occurring wild bird species were categorised as red or amber due to moderate or severe decline, with 37% on the amber list and 26% on the red list. The main groups of birds affected are those on wetlands, peatlands and farmlands and in marine environments.

Given these facts, I am puzzled that the nature restoration law is controversial and has aroused such anger. There are some Deputies who, in the normal run of events, are preoccupied with other issues, for example, complaining about refugees occupying hotel beds, accusing women accessing abortion of all sorts of things, or Deputies like me who drive diesel vans. Having taken time out of their busy schedules, they are here to denounce the proposals as the greatest threat to rural Ireland since Cromwell.

I, too, have spoken to farmers. They are concerned. Their fears, which are genuine, are based on what they have seen happening over the past decade as the agricultural policies of this State were led and determined by large interests in the food processing, beef and dairy sectors. While these interests have become larger and richer and exports of dairy and so forth have rocketed upwards, most small farmers have seen no benefit and feel more precarious and fearful about the future. Their fears are backed by research from the farming organisations on the number and incomes of that majority.

Farmers' fears are real and we need to compensate them for the biodiversity measures they take. However, I am puzzled by how so much of that fear is directed at what is a modest proposal. It should instead be directed at what is undermining farmers' livelihoods and futures. That is not the nature restoration law but the craven policies of this and past Governments that have benefited a relative few in the farming industry over the vast majority of ordinary farmers. The unsustainable model of industrial food production has to be challenged.

The report admits that all previous attempts under various habitats directives and regulations on protected areas have failed to halt the decline in biodiversity. Why is there hysteria? I am not concerned that the law is too radical or will mean too much change in order to save wildlife. My fear is the opposite, namely, that this law will join the many other directives and regulations that have failed to halt the decline in biodiversity. Until we look at the root causes of that decline – these are the same drivers pressurising ordinary farmers, namely, the industrial intensive model that prioritises the profits of large commercial interests over ordinary farmers – we will not stop it.

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