Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

There has been shockingly little coverage of the scandal of the illegal felling of over 30 acres of native broadleaf trees and mature hedgerows in Cork that date back to at least the 1800s, if not earlier. It was revealed by The Journal after an FOI to the National Parks and Wildlife Service last week discovered that nearly 2 km of ancient, long-established hedgerows with high biodiversity value for local wildlife were removed. Despite being refused permission to access the site via Coillte forestry lands, people continued to move their machinery onto the site for this illegal work through Coillte land. Is it going to be the standard that nature and biodiversity are to be sacrificed for profits in Cork? It is not far away from the Blackwater River, where there was an enormous fish kill, which I raised previously with the Taoiseach. How was this allowed to happen in the first place? How is the Government going to act to ensure it cannot happen again?

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