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

I will. I thank the Ceann Comhairle. I agree with a lot of the points made by Deputy Pringle, particularly with regard to local government.

I want to focus specifically on budget 2024 as it relates to nature. Members may recall that a vote took place here a number of weeks ago that reverberated across Europe, in my view. That was the vote regarding a debate on the nature restoration law, which was overwhelming endorsed by this House. In my view, it made a significant contribution to what happened with the vote in the European Parliament a short time later. That is really significant. Ireland and this Government have shown leadership when it comes to nature. All the way through the discourse - and there has been a lot of heated debate - I have consistently stated that we needed to have in place a strategic fund for nature that would enable us to move on this great big project of restoring nature across this country. This Government has delivered on that. The Green Party has delivered on it in budget 2024, with an infrastructure, climate and nature fund of €3.15 billion from 2026 to 2030. This is significant and marks a watershed in how we collectively treat nature in Ireland, how the Government can lead and how future Governments will be compelled to lead on restoring nature over the next decade and beyond.

Critically important in what this fund will do is that it will give a significant return on investment to rural economies, as a rural economic status, in terms of its multiplier effect and the value it will bring into rural communities. It will involve lots of people. It is what I see as the restoration economy. As we look at the context of the next few weeks, hugely significant is the fact that we will have a new national biodiversity action plan that will reflect this and that will see us embark on the development of our national nature restoration plan next year. For me, it involves everybody. It is going to involve farmers, fishers, foresters and hunters. It will involve community groups and a collective, whole-of-society approach that is led by Government, and which filters right down into State agencies, and collaboration at local authority level.

If we look at our water quality and the challenges around it, again, we secured an 11.5% increase for the water section of our Department. We will move on a new river basin management plan, and that is going to focus on a couple of areas such as removing barriers out of our rivers and having free-flowing rivers for fish migration, improving the quality of vegetation along the rivers, native woodlands, and addressing issues of pollution largely caused by agriculture but also by other sources. It is about protecting rural drinking water. I pay tribute to our group water schemes across the country for the amazing work they do. It is about protecting our marine areas and about the development of our marine protected areas, the legislation relating to which will shortly be brought to this House.

In that context, we felt it essential - the Green Party certainly felt it essential - that we have this fund in place but also that we have the capacity to deliver on such a fund. We are continuing the trajectory that we have been on with regard to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, and, in particular, the strategic review of the latter, which, on foot of a Government decision, is fully funded. We are continuing that trajectory through 2024 with a €67.5 million fund, which is up 15% on the figure for 2023 and up 135% since this Government was formed in 2020. Where will this go? It will go to our national parks and nature reserves. With my colleague, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, I recently announced the seventh national park for Ireland at Brú na Bóinne. We are dealing with European Court of Justice cases on conservation measures in our special areas of conservation and with breeding waders under the European Innovation Partnership project we have with the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine and my colleague, the Minister of State, Senator Pippa Hackett. This is for the conservation of iconic species such as curlew, lapwing, dunlin, redshank, snipe and golden plover. I love to be able to just name those species in this House.

It is something that I felt was important from my own background. I volunteered down at Killarney National Park in removing rhododendron many years ago, and I felt that it was important that we look at and try to develop a nature conservation volunteering pilot programme. There have been several programmes like this down the years but I felt that it was important to try and reintroduce a national programme. That is budgeted for in 2024. It is for our peatlands and our blanket and raised bogs. It is for tackling wildlife crime and fire in our national parks and nature reserves. I am very privileged and honoured that we were able to put this money into the NPWS, for the people on the ground who do the work, from our rangers right down to general operatives in our national parks, to our scientific unit and all of the staff in the NPWS who do incredible work and who for years have been starved of funding to facilitate that work. It is a great privilege to be able to bring those resources.

Overall, our heritage budget is €166 million for 2024, which is up 6.5% on 2023, and 132% on 2020. Again, this shows the value the Government has placed on our built, natural, cultural and archaeological heritage. Funding for the Heritage Council is €16 million in 2024, up 12% on 2023, and up over 110% on 2020, recognising the increasing role that the council has with regard to the reconfiguration of the national biodiversity data centre, rolling out biodiversity officers across every county - which we hope to complete this year - supporting our heritage teams and heritage officers across our local authorities, and administering the ongoing grant schemes. These are really good grant schemes, such as the historic towns initiative that the Heritage Council puts through every year.

On water quality, €35 million has been allocated for 2024. This is about putting more boots on the ground for inspections, working with farmers on fertiliser management, and enforcement. It is hugely important when we look at the trends in water quality and the debates that have taken place in here around nitrates and other issues over the last year or so. It will also support a major new programme around, as I have mentioned, barrier removal in our rivers. There are five pilots already under way. This is about freeing up those barriers in rivers in order to allow fish migration.

On built heritage, we look across the country, and what I see around our built and archaeological heritage has been transformative. We have three funding schemes, the community monuments fund, the built heritage investment scheme and the historic structures fund. These schemes have supported more than 2,000 projects since 2020 in every county, including the Ceann Comhairle's county. They are everywhere. We see the projects, and we see tradespeople and professionals working on conserving our built and archaeological heritage at a time when climate change is having an impact on those structures as well. It is also about protecting our national heritage estate - the master plan for the Boyne Valley national park will commence now that we have the purchase in train - and supporting local authorities to develop the nominations for UNESCO's world heritage tentative list.

Last night in the Seanad, we completed the passage of the Historic and Archaeological Heritage and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill. It is on way to President Higgins to be signed into law. It is very transformative legislation and relates to climate adaptation measures for built and archaeological heritage. Ireland was one of the first countries in Europe to develop a sectoral climate change adaptation plan. That work is ongoing and is really fantastic. In this regard, I should also refer to the maintenance of our world-class heritage research partnerships and the co-ordination of the Heritage Ireland 2030 plan across government.

On the other strand of my portfolio, electoral reform, we have a busy year ahead. The Electoral Commission,An Coimisiún Toghcháin, is now firmly established, and its first task was to prepare a report and make recommendations on electoral boundaries. However, we will have European and local elections next year, in addition to the first-ever election of a directly elected mayor for Limerick. The commission's tasks will include promoting public awareness of elections and referendums, overseeing and modernising the electoral register and carrying out reviews it decides to conduct on the administration of electoral events, the registration of political parties and the annual research programmes. I have asked it to examine several issues, particularly the possibility of reducing the voting age and the use of election posters. These are just a few of the tasks but they are very important given where democracies are going across the world. Now more than ever, the commission will play a vital role in strengthening our great democracy.

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