Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

By the sounds of things, we all now know what the Minister of State does in his spare time. It sounds very interesting. Comhghairdeachas on the new role.

I live in Galway city. Where I live, on the east side of Galway city, we are really lucky with different nature places we can go to. One of my favourite places is Ballyloughane Beach. I love going down there for a walk. Another place is Merlin Woods. During the Covid pandemic, I think we really noticed how important those places were, especially for people like me who live in a city. So many of us were very lucky to be able to go out in Merlin Woods in Galway city. It has been a huge respite for people on the east side of the city. I commend the fantastic work that has been done by Friends of Merlin Woods to enhance the woods in order to make it a place people can come to and use as a respite. There is also a community element. There is a community garden, litter pickups and all that kind of thing where people come together to have a sense of community and a place. Sometimes there can be not as strong a community in the new places in our cities. Friends of Merlin Woods have done huge work just this week again for Biodiversity Week organising so many different types of events. I commend them on that.

Likewise, we have the Dúlra Project, run with support from Forum Connemara. It is a community-based project in its approach to protecting our biodiversity. They are doing huge work to eradicate rhododendron in Connemara. Rhododendron is a highly invasive plant that takes over entire hillsides and prevents any native plants from growing. What is very difficult for the work of the Dúlra Project, for example, is that while it is doing the back-breaking labour of removing rhododendron root by root, you can go into the local garden centre and buy the very same plant for your garden, which totally undoes, obviously, the benefit of that work. Despite EU law, several invasive species are still sold in shops across this State. One of the recommendations from the citizens' assembly on biodiversity was to ban the sale of these invasive species. We need to look at that because huge work has been done.

We also need a long-term approach to improving our biodiversity. We have the people on the ground who are committed and willing to do the work but we need that vision as well. We have schemes like ACRES, but there are huge issues with ACRES and people not getting paid and not being able to get the information as to when they will get paid either.

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