Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wish everyone here a happy St. Brigid's Day. Brigid was originally a pagan goddess associated with spring and new beginnings. It is great to see our Government colleagues in the Fine Gael Party backing the long-time call from the Green Party to make this day a public holiday.

Unfortunately, it has not been very springlike of late. Over the weekend, we saw pictures of the DART line at Seapoint underwater and of the coasts getting battered by waves.Flooding is widespread across the country. On my farm in County Offaly, I have noticed water lying in parts of fields I have never seen water in before. As a farmer, it is very difficult to accept these floods, particularly if one has crops underwater or animals on the land. Initial thoughts might be to drain these fields to prevent future flooding in these areas but all this will achieve is to move the problem onto someone else's land further downstream.

This is climate change and it is happening before our very eyes. Rising sea levels may at some time in the future leave the stretch of the DART line to which I refer permanently underwater and threaten many coastal homes. We can continue to build bigger and bigger walls, dredge our rivers and take out pinch points, but none of these really tackle the root of the problem. We hear a great deal about nature-based solutions and this is something the Government wants to take seriously. We know that some lands are simply meant to be wet – bogs and those with peaty soils, for example - and some lands are meant to flood, if we think about our many callows. However, in the past we have not accepted this and instead we have tried to force this land to be something it is not meant to be and this had knock-on effects. It is not just farmlands, but lands chosen for housing, road development, forestry and wind farms. How we use our land in the future will be critical.

Of course, nature always fights back and she will continue to do so unless we start working with her. We will probably spend millions, if not billions, of euro on flood defences into the future, so why not spend some of that money supporting our farmers and landowners to do this for us, by implementing nature-based solutions? Let us invest in our land, in that natural capital - its trees and wetlands, its soils and habitats - not in more concrete and diggers. For decades, we have been encouraging farmers to drain fields, remove hedges and scrub and kill every weed in sight in order to maximise productivity and squeeze as much out of land as possible. This has required financial investment from the State and from farmers, and while it has delivered economic return for some, we know it has not delivered for the environment.

Things are changing. We are now asking many farmers to consider a future which looks like it is going in the opposite direction, but it is not - it is the future. The EU's green deal and its strategies on biodiversity and farm to fork have set some lofty targets. While none of us can really argue about the reasons behind these strategies, the consequences may be significant for our communities and we, as a Government, must work hard to support and reassure our citizens that this is the correct approach, because it is the correct approach and our country's future depends on getting it right. I am quite sure Brigid would agree.