Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The nature restoration law is a modest thing and, for the most part, we have already agreed and adopted all of its targets and objectives. The controversial issue of rewetting is going to be accounted for mainly on State lands. It is reasonable that farmers who believe that rewetting might affect their adjoining lands should get assurances of support from the Government, but it is certainly no reason to oppose this law. Beware politicians who speak out of both sides of their mouths. I do not understand what the Government is up to in this context. The Government says it is serious about biodiversity, yet Fine Gael, as part of the European People's Party, has just pulled out of the discussions and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael backbenchers are essentially rallying against this very modest measure. Games are being played for political purposes.

Beware also politicians who keep talking about the urban-rural divide. The real division in this country is between the poor, be they small and struggling farmers in rural areas or poor people in urban areas, and the rich in urban and rural areas. If anyone wants to understand what is threatening and destroying biodiversity, it is the greed of big agribusiness and rich corporations more generally that want to invest in industrial forms of forestry that destroy biodiversity, are bad for water and soil quality and do nothing to restore nature. In fact, they destroy nature. The common thread is that it is all about money, and money for the few, not for the ordinary farmer. We need a just transition for small farmers and funding to ensure that they are paid and rewarded for enhancing biodiversity and restoring nature. Their lack of trust in the Government is understandable, but it should not be exploited in a cynical way by people who are just playing political games with a serious issue, that being, the destruction of biodiversity, which threatens all of humanity.

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