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

The German philosopher Walter Benjamin once wrote that "Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world history. But the situation may be quite different. Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake." If we ever wanted an example of why we collectively need to pull the emergency brake, we look at the scale of the biodiversity crisis that is facing humanity and the globe. There have been a 70% drop in wildlife populations over the past 50 years with extinction now threatening a quarter of all of Earth's species, 40% of amphibians, one third of marine mammals and 10% of insect species. In Ireland, 63% of our wild bird species have a red or amber status and 85% of supposedly EU-protected habitats have bad or inadequate status. Europe is a disaster and biodiversity in Ireland is at the bottom. We are the 13th worst country in the world - an extremely nature-depleted country.

However, nothing is changing. Let us be honest. We are still heading for disaster. This is not some middle-class esoteric concern - "if you are concerned about rare birds, you should be concerned about this" or "if you like to see pandas, you will be concerned about this". If you eat food, you should be concerned about the biodiversity because without nature, there is no food. We hear the line "no farmers, no food" and that is correct but "no nature, no farmers" and we are heading towards ecological breakdown and a breakdown of our food systems. That is where we are heading.

There is a problem in that when you get citizens together and you get young people together, they say very clearly that we are utterly failing and we need radical change. Recommendation ten from citizens' assembly says that we advocate for a shift in emphasis in EU and international economic policy away from GDP expansion as a goal in itself and towards the goals of societal and ecological well-being. What is happening? The Minister of State said earlier that he estimated that over 80% of the recommendations and 90% of the calls to action are already in progress or captured in the fourth national biodiversity action plan. The Taoiseach said something similar to me on Tuesday claiming that 93% of the recommendations have been implemented or are in progress. He then admitted that the phrase "in progress" is one we need to watch in politics. In this case, it is a euphemism for doing nothing. Let us be real. It can only be by a tick-box exercise, pure lip service and a purely quantitative analysis that we can say "don't worry, we're 90% on top of this problem" when the problem is getting worse. You turn on your radio in the morning and hear the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, probably the person with the greatest responsibility for doing something about the biodiversity crisis because the driving factor is land use change, that is, industrialised agriculture, and what is he saying? He is peddling the IDA line that Ireland feeds the world when actually we are a net importer of calories and is reiterating the Government's absolute commitment to continuing with the nitrates derogation. That derogation is one of the main causes of the unsatisfactory water quality in almost half our rivers and streams, which in turn is a driving factor in biodiversity loss. He is even abandoning the advice of his own Food Vision dairy group established by him Minister in 2022, which recommended an exit and reduction scheme to compensate farmers for reducing their herds. The Government is now ruling that out. One part of the Government is saying it recognises the scale of the crisis and we have to act, etc., but the other part - the main part - is acting as if business can continue as usual and that nature can continue to be a sink for all the pollution that capitalism and industrial agriculture can throw at it.

This brings me to the most important recommendation, which is that an expert group be established to explore having a referendum on the rights of nature because this gets to the essence of the problem, namely, that capitalism treats nature as a free gift and a dumping ground for pollution. Capitalism has helped to create a massive rift between humanity as a whole and nature - this connection from what Marx described as our organic body. Putting it into the Constitution could help to overcome that. It could say that nature has rights and the rights of nature are intrinsically linked to the right of humanity to have clean, liveable, safe and proper environmental standards in all aspects of our lives. It would dramatically improve people's lives.

I am a bit worried that it seems the expert group has been downgraded. I am interested in hearing the Minister of State's response. The report from the NPWS says the NPWS will explore the ways in which the rights of nature could be formally recognised, including the potential for constitutional change. Will we have an expert group, can we see the terms of reference for it and can we make sure proper international and local experts are involved in that?

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