Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. Many times we spoke about climate action and a climate crisis. This is our opportunity today as Greens to put biodiversity on the table for its own sake and not to mix up messages. Absolutely, we need to look at how both can exacerbate each other's problems but today it is about biodiversity.

As a Government, we have two Ministers with responsibility for biodiversity, one of whom is a Minister in Cabinet. We have the Ministers, Senator Hackett and Deputy Noonan, and that is a valuable position to be in. I agree, however, with many of the comments that this is an all-of-government issue and must go across every Department. In fact, as a spokesperson on education I believe it must permeate every bit of children's lives as well.

Today, what I will say is a kind of love note to suburbia because it often gets forgotten. Senator Moynihan spoke passionately about inner cities and architecture. We also hear from farming communities. I have had much experience coming from a farming background too but really I grew up, raised my family and will more than likely end my days in suburbia in a much-loved three-up, two-down.

When I was growing up we had insects hitting our windows. We were stung by bees frequently. We sat on our doorsteps and identified birds, as has been outlined by Senator Murphy as well on his farm. We did the same, however, in suburbia and it was an important part of our upbringing. What we did not have was the understanding of what we were about to lose. For that reason, steps were not put in place to save the things we were about to lose.Much of this is related to the interests of corporations and monoculture but also a lack of understanding. We must bring people with us as we move forward. Suburban parks in those days were barren, scorched places and planting was frequently spruce. We must reverse that and bring people with us as we do so.

In the past few months, I have witnessed the unfolding of nature around me. On my street, mowing has stopped and I see wild flowers surging, children out playing and experiencing nature and older neighbours hand-picking weeds. My campaign manager, Claire Hillery, started a campaign in Galway called "Say No to the Mow". People became aware of all the colours they could see because of the surge in the number of wild flowers. When we looked outside, we no longer saw only green but pinks, blues and yellows, perhaps as a result of that.

I was also honoured to chair the climate action and environment strategic policy committee of Galway City Council at the time we put forward and adopted the all-Ireland pollinator plan. We had dedicated volunteers on the committee who did much work for years. Parks around the city have been transformed. What we must do is explain the message because the council has been criticised for not collecting grass or waste materials, for instance, and not doing as much mowing. We need to take that criticism on board, start a conversation on it and explain that we are doing this because we are giving back to nature.

The Minister of State, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, will bring forward the fourth national biodiversity action plan next year setting out our policies under the European Green Deal and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. I welcome that. As Senator Dolan correctly stated, that needs to be implemented at local authority level. In my final year as a councillor on Galway City Council, we managed to have a biodiversity officer and a tree officer appointed. That has not happened in all local authorities but it is an area on which we can make progress.

When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, bogs were cherished as sources of fuel and because people had fun on them on days out with their families. The Department has funded a significant biodiversity restoration initiative, the Atlantic bog project, in recognition of the strength of the role bogs play in biodiversity and as carbon sinks. This was done outside the programme for Government. The project will be on 2,100 ha of bogs on the Atlantic coast and I am delighted that Derryclare bog in Galway will be one of them.

We need to remove commercial forests from bogland. I take exception to comments that we should not look at the economy. We must understand and recognise that farmers make a living from these lands. We must recognise that they have been let down by the Common Agricultural Policy. The EU habitats directive, the importance of which my colleague has spoken about, also gets a mixed reaction from farmers, particularly in the west which I know well. People need to make an income from their land, as they are used to doing. We need to look at biodiversity in economic terms as well.I fundamentally believe this, which is why I welcome the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, being in the Department with responsibility for agriculture. She takes that approach and looks at farmers' interests as well as nature's interests. Both have to go hand in hand because human beings are part of the ecosystem.

When we were younger we looked at plastic and we now understand that we should not put all of the bottles into the same bin and we do not put paper and cardboard in the same bin as food waste. In the short time we have had, we have taken a huge step forward in our understanding of plastic waste, partly because people can look at images on David Attenborough's television programmes and elsewhere and see what it actually does to our marine life. This is the first step in some ways for us in the Government to look at biodiversity in the fullest sense and really show it to people in a really concrete way. When people stand at the front doors of their suburban homes they no longer get stung by bees or see insects or other wildlife. We must think back to how it used to be for previous generations and think forward to what we can do now and what the Green Party, Fianna Fáil and the Fine Gael Party have the opportunity to do in government in partnership with the Opposition.