Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the comments of the Minister of State on the opening up of the organic scheme. We know Ireland is a complete laggard when it comes to organics. It can only help when more farmers are encouraged to go into organic farming. It links into what I want to raise this morning on the biodiversity crisis we have in the country and what I believe is a complete lack of respect for protecting habitats and wildlife. In some parts of government there is not just a lack of respect but contempt for our natural environment, particularly for those who seek to protect it. We often see that those who seek to protect the environment are treated as pariahs while those who flout the laws through illegal burning, hedgerow cutting and badger baiting rarely go punished. In some cases it can be State bodies that carry out the breaches of the law.

I have good reason to believe that in one case the OPW carried out works on Emo Court that disturbed a bat roost, knowing full well it had no derogation licence for the works and that the assessment carried out in advance warned that those works could not be done without significant disturbance to the bat roost. Last weekend, Friends of Tymon Park brought me to the park in Tallaght to see a badger sett that was completely flattened by park staff to make way for a cross country running track.The community group has tried without success to get answers from South Dublin County Council on the works that were carried out. There appears to be no evidence of any environmental assessment and no public consultation on the location of that cross country running track in Tymon Park. If our badger setts are not even safe within our parklands, what hope do they have when they are on private land? It is hardly surprising then that when an EU official, Mr. Ciobanu-Dordea, spoke at a Friends of Irish Environment conference he slammed Ireland’s track record and pointed out that only 15% of our terrestrial habitats are in favourable condition; 50% are suffering decline; rarely, if ever, are environmental impact assessments carried out on peat extraction and afforestation; and we are bottom of the Natura 2000 network with only 2.5% of our marine waters protected. Likewise he pointed out that the penal and uncertain costs associated with bringing environmental court cases is a clear attempt to try to chill and deter environmental cases being taken. We are the most expensive State in the EU in which to take an environmental claim before the courts and those who do are slated in the media and by some politicians who have castigated them and have openly threatened to cut the funding of environmental NGOs. It is a damning account of access to justice in Ireland. It is exacerbated by the fact that our National Parks and Wildlife Service was so under-resourced for years that it too lacks the capacity to uphold the law and it has no legal status to properly meet its current obligations in protecting the habitats. I ask the Leader if we could have a debate on the biodiversity crisis in the country and on the National Parks and Wildlife Service review, particularly on access to justice and Ireland’s lack of compliance with the Aarhus Convention.