Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome both comments. I was in the Cooley Mountains last week with an upland farmer. I met the Brandon Hill farmers and people involved in the Blackstairs EIP, European Innovation Partnership, project; they are fantastic people doing really important work. They need to be supported to do that. An initiative like this would be able to tease out all those issues and have a really good conversation on the best way to manage our uplands in a sustainable way. I would suggest that perhaps the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine would be a more appropriate lead. Certainly, we would play our part in such an initiative but it is critically important. These people are volunteers and they do important conservation work. We would like to support them in that way.

To return to Knocklofty, I am delighted that the built heritage investment scheme was able to support that. I would encourage the stakeholders involved in Knocklofty to look at our grant schemes and to look at a longer-term conservation plan for the project. The Department has really good grant schemes and if initiative is shown around a long-term strategy for Knocklofty I do not think any of us will be found wanting in support for having such an important built conservation project on the books.