Vincent P Martin (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators for the prompt and unreserved support for the Bill on Committee Stage. I welcome the Minister, Senator Hackett, my Green Party colleague, to the Chamber. She is a supporter of this Bill and is doing her best to find a way forward for it. That is to be acknowledged. Since around 2012, there has been an almost 1,200% increase in imports of non-native honey bees into Ireland. If, despite increased efforts by lobby groups to create conservation areas and to improve education, this continues, there is no doubt Ireland would lose its unique position with respect to Apis mellifera mellifera. The continuous imports of other sub-species, which do not survive our winters and need to be continuously minded by beekeepers, interrupts the adaptation of our native bees to the unique conditions in Ireland, generating hybrids that do not have the same characteristics of the native bees that have evolved here. Continued imports mean that even those hybrids here now will not have the opportunity of adapting because each year new bees come in for long enough to mate with local bees and cause disruption to the traits that have emerged in local areas to cope with local environments. We will end up with a population of primarily crossbred bees, as has happened in the UK and elsewhere. That may forever require beekeeper assistance because they cannot survive in this environment anymore. We will see a huge loss of genetic variation in an already endangered sub-species. Our wild honey bees would also struggle to survive this onslaught.

In 2020, an increase of-----