Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Senator Malcolm Byrne.

I welcome the Minister of State. Fianna Fáil welcomes this opportunity to discuss solutions to the ongoing biodiversity crisis and will support the motion proposed by the Green Party. I compliment my colleagues on it. The rate of global change in nature during the past 50 years is unprecedented in human history. Nature across most of the globe has now been significantly altered by human activity, with the great majority of ecosystems and biodiversity showing rapid decline. Globally, 75% of the land surface is significantly altered. Some 66% of the ocean area is experiencing increasing impacts and over 85% of the wetlands have been lost.

These global changes have many reverberations in Ireland, where most Irish habitats have unfavourable status. Bee and butterfly species are in decline and many marine species are now reportedly at risk of extinction. It is welcome that the Government has moved in several areas to provide additional supports to protect an enhanced biodiversity. These include moves to establish a new wildlife crime unit in the NPWS, progressing the final report of an independent advisory group on marine protected areas and providing funding in both the July stimulus and budget 2021. As the motion outlines, the programme for Government also sets out a number of additional actions which are required over the Government's term in office to address the crisis further.It is vital that the commitments contained in the programme for Government are completed as soon as possible. In May 2019, Ireland became only the second country in the world to declare a biodiversity emergency, on foot of a Fianna Fáil amendment that I had the pleasure to propose in my time in the Dáil. In moving this amendment, we recognised that the national biodiversity action plan did not go far enough and that further action was needed at the time.

We also called for the establishment of a Citizens' Assembly on biodiversity loss. I was very pleased to see such a commitment in the programme for Government that was agreed by the three parties because it will not be by an act of this House that biodiversity will be protected but through the sustained effort of all citizens across the State. It will not be done by academics sitting in isolation, identifying the problem and directing the custodians of the land to deliver; it will be done in harmony with them. The farmers are the first people who need to be consulted and their concerns and views taken on board.

I come from a farming family from a small farm in a part of the country where the land is not considered to be especially good. There is a very significant mix of species there, from rushes to heather, wet land to dry land, trees, shrubs and hedgerows. Until such time as we come to appreciate that kind of land and remove the burden of production that has become a feature of modern farming, we must provide the appropriate resources to the custodians of this type of land rather than continuing to reward those who focus only on the production of grass, grain and corn through unnatural, forced means to meet our food requirements. It will have to be done in a holistic way. We must look at the way we consume and waste food. This will not be done in isolation. I hope we can have such a discussion in a Citizens' Assembly where we bring all sides together rather than look at the issue in isolation. This is a significant problem, which is part of our culture of overproduction based on an insatiable demand for more and more products and greater production that, sadly, ends up dumped in landfill.