Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I echo the recommendation that everyone visits the Rediscovery Centre. When I worked in Global Action Plan in Ballymun, I worked closely with Dr. Miller and the Rediscovery Centre. It is an incredible resource. I was going to say I was happy the Minister of State was in the Gallery because of what I was going to speak about today. I will not have the opportunity to speak during the citizens' assembly debate but I would like to raise a number of issues that should feature in the biodiversity citizens' assembly, one of which is the role the State is playing in actively destroying habitats and undermining our wildlife laws.

In the past week, we have had two separate reports outlining where the Office of Public Works, OPW, has breached animal welfare laws, one in Emo Court and the second in Barryscourt Castle, Cork, by disturbing bat roosts without the proper licence. Work in Barryscourt began in 2016 but a bat specialist was not called into the 600-year-old castle until 2020. I am more familiar with the case of Emo Court because I have been given the runaround by the OPW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service for the past number of months. It was only through a freedom of information request that I was able to expose the fact that despite an ecologist visiting Emo Court in 2019 and saying works could not go ahead because the mitigation could not ensure the safety of the bat roost, the OPW ploughed ahead. When I say, "ploughed ahead", it ploughed ahead. It was only when it was reported by people who rightly whistleblew on this that the National Parks and Wildlife Service went out to investigate the site in January 2020. The only evidence of bats they found was swept-up bat droppings and a dead bat. To make matters worse, it appears the National Parks and Wildlife Service, instead of doing its job, which would have been to file a criminal complaint regarding the works the OPW undertook without a licence, it appears licences were retrospectively granted and a prosecution has not been pursued. When we talk about a biodiversity crisis, if biodiversity is not safe within State bodies and they are going out and actively destroying it, and if a second body is facilitating one body in doing so, what hope do we have on private land?

It is also the case that the OPW has form in this area. It is not just these two individual cases. We only have to look at what it is doing to rivers throughout the country. I recommend that everybody looks at the Twitter account of environmental consultants ECOFACT, run by Dr. Will O'Connor, who constantly exposes the brutal works carried out by the OPW. It recently destroyed otter, kingfisher and lamprey habitats on the Nenagh River and yet the OPW gave itself a very good rating in its environmental audit of those works.I will not be able to say this in the debate so I am calling for the citizens' assembly to address the role of the OPW because I would not trust it with a fly at the moment. The assembly must also look at who monitors the work the OPW is carrying out. When it comes to wildlife crime, nobody can be above the law.