Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate. I thank Deputies Fitzmaurice, Harkin and McNamara. It was not a motion that I could cosign, but I recognise their bona fides and I see where they are coming from. It is important that a focus is placed on this very significant initiative from Europe in order to ensure fulsome information goes out. That it is voluntary in nature and its implementation is being left to each member state is also very important. It is most disingenuous, unhelpful and dangerous to set up a false divide between us and them and between Deputies from rural areas and other Deputies. I have the privilege of representing a diverse constituency, with the three Aran Islands in addition to Inishbofin, Connemara, and from Galway city to south Mayo. I have stood up here repeatedly on the side of small farmers and for fishermen. If I had time, I would go into how the EU policies systematically undermine those livelihoods. However, I firmly believe that balanced rural development is important for the solutions we need to introduce.

I thank Dr. Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin and welcome the recent publication of the report of the citizens' assembly. Dr. Ní Shúilleabháin referred to her utter frustration and the "fundamental disappointment in the capacity demonstrated by the State to coherently and deliberately tackle biodiversity loss." It is in that context that she and the 100 representatives of the citizens' assembly went on to make 159 recommendations.

The report states:

We are consistently losing our hedgerows, likened by one speaker to the blood supply system of the countryside. Only 2% of the country has native woodland. Over a quarter of Ireland's regularly occurring bird species are in danger of extinction. At least one third of protected species are declining in population, an invisible tragedy happening both on land and under water. Almost 30% of our semi-natural grasslands have been lost... Less than half of our marine environment can be described as healthy.

That is not the latest position, however, because the latest is the ruling of the European Court of Justice on 29 June that Ireland had breached its obligations under the habitats directive.

Earlier in the year, we had other research from Belfast telling us that there are more losers than winners. The researchers were from Queen's University Belfast. In May 2023, they concluded that some 48%, almost half, of more than 71,000 species included in the analysis are undergoing population decline. The report states that global diversity, life on Earth, is entering its sixth mass extinction. As I have only two minutes, I cannot read out all of that but the background to it was the declaring of a climate emergency in 2019, and a biodiversity emergency.

We are here to discuss a specific regulation that leaves flexibility to each country. I share some of the concerns on the ground from the ordinary person in relation to the EU's double policies and doublespeak. While there is an emphasis on climate measures and them being very important, there is also warmongering. There is also a military-industrial complex that will completely take away any of our targets in relation to climate change. There is a doublespeak and treblespeak going on. There is also the continuation of emissions trading. This is concept of the market taking charge and being the most important thing in making progressing on emissions. I am completely cynical when it comes to the doublespeak of the EU. I have no difficulty with this particular issue, but I deplore what the various MEPs have done - one from Sinn Féin and the others from Fine Gael - instead of sticking with the process and bringing appropriate amendments.

As I stand here, it is honestly nauseating that we are continuing on with a false debate in the face of the existential crisis that we face. Dr. Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin referred to the meitheal. This is the most fundamental concept; that we would be in this together to face the threat we have, not by punishment but by us recognising that the only way out of this is that there will be no future for small or big farmers if we do not embrace the steps that we need to take.

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