Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

If the Bill was confined to the issues of natural heritage and that was its primary and clear focus, I would of course have to accept the Minister of State's points and bona fides. However, it is very clear from the criteria the Minister assigns him or herself for making decisions in this Bill that national, regional, and local economic, social, and cultural needs are placed in the centre of this, so I am not introducing an extraneous or new factor. I understand that national, regional, and local economic, social, and cultural needs are important issues, but the fact is that the Bill itself places those as issues to be considered alongside, and indeed given equal if not more than equal footing with environmental and natural heritage concerns. It is a little bit inconsistent if the decision whether an area of land will be protected is made by considering local economic social needs, while the Minister of State does not believe it is appropriate for him to think about turbary rights, which are absolutely at the centre of local economic social and cultural needs and local and economic social and cultural practice. There is an inconsistency here. If those factors were not addressed in the Bill, I would not be introducing this amendment, but they are, so if we are going to have them considered and if decisions are going to be made on the back of them, we need to know what goes into that decision. The Minister for State has described the processes around relocating rights to other areas, for example. That is something that can happen under this Bill, so we need to know what we are considering and what is involved.

This is a very appropriate amendment. It is simply a report but it sets some level of understanding. I am reiterating this all the time but these are issues on which we will need to report to ourselves because we need to know exactly what we are doing. Ireland has carbon targets and biodiversity targets. We need to know what is happening in relation to them, and one of the things we need to know in terms of cutting is how much is cut. We cannot simply introduce in this Bill a whole network of blind spots where we will not know what is happening or how much is cut. A definition of household use will give us at least some measure of that and something we can do. Particularly in the European context, when the whole picture on the Common Agricultural Policy is changing, when our Commissioner is arguing around environmental stewardship payments, when there is a whole push around carbon sequestration, we simply will not be able to say what we are sequestering because we will not know what is happening because we have set no limit.We made that point in relation to hedgerows when that Bill went through and we have seen the consequence. The Heritage Act removed the requirement for reporting or clarity on what was cut, in terms of hedgerows. A de-designation without any guidance on turbary rights removes clarity and information as to what might happen. It is a simple thing and it is about respecting social and cultural practice while also respecting the natural environment.