Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

Ministerial appointments by this Government have not generally filled me with joy but I was glad to hear the Minister of State would be taking up this role. It is clear he has a genuine love of nature and a wealth of knowledge to back it up that would put most of us to shame, so I welcome his appointment. Unfortunately, our trees and hedgerows have never been more in danger. The legal protections in place for habitats are wide open to abuse, due mainly to exemptions in the Wildlife Act, the cultural failure to take such crimes seriously and the ongoing lack of resourcing of the NPWS. Those of us who care deeply about nature are often left in a state of helpless dismay as healthy trees whose existence may have spanned generations or long rows of hedgerows are destroyed by heavy machinery for agricultural or construction purposes or sometimes for mere aesthetic reasons. Hedgerows are routinely pulverised by flails, often in areas where no road safety risk is posed, at any time of the year without consequence. The health and safety rationale is too often a carte blanche to destroy everything in sight.

There is no district conservation officer, regional manager or park ranger in the NPWS, which is a long-standing state of affairs. Bizarrely, when the Department is asked about staffing levels across different regions in parliamentary questions, the response is that the NPWS does not, for reasons of operational security, provide these details. If we were to follow this logic, information would not be provided on the number of gardaí stationed in a particular town or region. This country is a wild west when it comes to the protection of habitats. There are huge morale issues in the NPWS because it has been chronically under-resourced and hobbled by weak legislation in carrying out its work. The Wildlife Act is in desperate need of strengthening. Section 40(2)(b), in particular, allows for the destruction of vegetation "in the ordinary course of agriculture". That needs to change. I urge the Minister of State to engage with Hedgerows Ireland and BirdWatch Ireland to see how to better protect the natural heritage, which provides us with so much of our sense of place, well-being and connection with the very essence of life itself.

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