Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Collins, and thank him for taking time out of his very busy schedule to deal with this issue on behalf of the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Noonan.

As everybody may be aware, the mink, a member of the weasel family, is not natural to Ireland but was imported in the 1950s as part of a commercial fur production operation. Due to many escapees, and in instances where the commercial entity may not have been as successful as people thought, mink were sometimes deliberately released. They have now become a very invasive pest or species in the Irish countryside. By nature, mink is an aggressive, opportunistic and invasive predator with no natural predator of its own in the Irish landscape. Its population, therefore, is ever-growing. A mink will and can kill surplus to its food requirements.It is known that when mink go into the hen houses of domestic fowl, they do not just kill the hens they want to eat but they will kill all ten, 15 or 20 hens, fill their bellies and then they are gone. This is common, and not just with domestic fowl. They will also target any eggs, fish within our lakes and rivers and ground-nesting birds.

We have a situation in this country with, we will say, hen harriers and various species of eagle where much land has been designated. Many people have made many sacrifices and bought into projects where their lands and properties have been devalued by designation for the hen harrier, in particular, and for numerous different species. It is, therefore, a complete contradiction if some measure is not introduced to control the mink. There is no point in land being designated and people going to the ends of the earth to try to enhance, increase and improve species of wild bird if an opportunistic invasive predator is creating an imbalance within the numbers of that species and can undo all the good by a quick kill overnight.

It is estimated at the minute that the population of wild mink in Ireland could be north of 50,000 and it is ever-spreading and ever-increasing. The National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, has responsibility for the implementation of domestic and European wildlife Acts. The programme for Government states that we will prohibit the spread of invasive species. A report is being compiled on it at the moment, but it is not happening. I would plead at this time in the interest of the fish population in many of our lakes and rivers, hares, young pheasants, water hens, curlews, corncrakes, black-headed gulls, hen harriers, snipe and all domestic fowl, all of which are rare species at the moment in Ireland. We hear conversations on a daily basis about how limited their numbers are in comparison with when we were all younger back in the day. There is no point in us making a concerted effort to try to reintroduce and protect these species if we are allowing another one to run wild and undo all that good work.

I look forward to the Minister of State's response. This is a major issue for our biodiversity in rural Ireland.