Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will not take that long. I pay tribute to Senator Grace O'Sullivan, a true environmental warrior. I am delighted to support this motion. Throughout our engagements, be they on the environment, health or housing, we have seen that a bottom-up, community stakeholder approach is the way to go. Stakeholders and communities need to be at the decision-making table. It does not seem to have occurred to the Government to allow that to happen, however, even though it is the way to achieve progress. As such, there is no way that I could support an amendment that removed this essential detail and diluted the motion. We need the experts, fishermen, farmers and everyone working on our seas and lakes involved. They know best how to plan for and protect our historical heritage, which we will hand on if it is not destroyed.

We must look after our planet's well-being because our planet looks after us. We are surrounded by seas but, as Senator Kelleher mentioned, they have become toxic. The images we saw recently of a sea of trash, with plastic everywhere killing off what kept us alive, opened our eyes. We cannot wait to protect this environment. It is priceless.

As an urban dweller and as a Dub, I mostly beat the streets of concrete, and I am committed to doing that into the future, but I have become more aware of what feeds and protects me, my family, my community, our country and the world, that is, the cleaning and healing nature of our seas and land. We all go about destroying them, however, so we need to cop on. We do not have the luxury of time. We are losing a great deal every day. Responsibility for that lies with the people, not any one government, so I will be strong on the question of stakeholder involvement. This impacts on everyone's environment. We will need to feed into that process. Stakeholder involvement promotes ownership of any decision that is taken, be it difficult or one with which people do not agree 100%. Ownership would make things happen.

I commend Senator Grace O'Sullivan and urge her to keep at it. We will follow in her footsteps. I hope that Fine Gael will wise up.