Malcolm Noonan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I extend my sympathies to the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, on the passing of his sister Anne. I am delighted with his appointment. He has the same grá for this post as I did. I thank the Members for their kind comments on my small role over the past couple of years in stopping the rot. We had a poor track record up to that. I thank the Taoiseach because he gave me great support during my time in office and I had cross-party support as well.

I will start National Biodiversity Week on Friday on Lough Ree with Owen Murphy and the fantastic team with the Breeding Waders European innovation partnership, EIP. It is a fantastic project. Senator Murphy spoke about the loss of many of our breeding wading birds and our ground-nesting birds. That is an innovative project doing fantastic work with farmers and local communities in trying to keep important species on our landscape. I am looking forward to that.

I pay tribute to the Irish farm network, National Parks and Wildlife Service and everybody involved in biodiversity week. I think back to taking over the ministerial role in 2020 and examining the context of it. We were in the depths of a global pandemic and nature became a great consolation to all of us. We found in our 2 km and 5 km walks that we started noticing nature. Perhaps because things were becoming more silent, we could hear the birds singing and we could notice the sights and sounds of nature more. It did spark a reawakening in all of our collective consciousness of the need, importance and significance of restoring nature. I welcome that. The Government was leading on what communities had asked us to do and what farmers had been asking us to do. That is where we took that lead and initiative from. I pay tribute to the leaders on that over the past number of years, such as the NPWS. It is an incredible organisation. It has incredibly dedicated public servants. Some of them will be watching our debate this afternoon.

I travelled the country and visited every county in my little grey partridge, as I called her. It was incredible to see the work they were doing, from general operatives in our national parks to the park rangers to the district conservation officers to all of the scientific staff right up to the top level, headed by Niall O'Donoghue and his team. I saw an incredibly dedicated group of people who finally had been given the resources to do all of the stuff that they wanted to do for decades. Some of these people were 20 to 30 years in the NPWS and never had those resources to lead on the headstarting programmes for curlews, the grey partridge project, the natterjack toad and the reintroduction of species. All of these projects have been hugely important. It is also about the tracks and trials in our national parks and nature reserves. We now have two new national parks. We could and should have more. We also have more nature reserves. The NPWS has purchased quite a lot of land over the past number of years and all of that will be put to good use for nature. The critical issue has been the shift in the relationship between the NPWS and particularly landowners and farmers over the past number of years. It is now a much more collaborative approach. We have farm plan schemes and good schemes there such as EIPs and LIFE projects that farmers want to be actively involved in. Before they were being told by the EU to follow a certain method of production and now this is a whole changed approach.Farmers are embracing biodiversity. There has to be money attached to that. Some people call that compensation but it is not. It is about getting paid properly for ecosystem services, water quality and restoring nature on their land. That brings us to the next big project that we have to do collectively as a country, which is the new national nature restoration plan. That is going to be a very important piece of work that is being led by Dr. Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin and the team in the NPWS. I look forward to seeing that emerge.

There is one critical issue I have to raise. My colleague spoke about the drivers of biodiversity loss. We are looking at real concerns about EU funding and where it is going to go. Is it going to go to environmental schemes like the LIFE projects or is it going to be siphoned off for defence spending? The Government has to play an important role in shaping that conversation and to then look separately at the big driver of biodiversity losses. Yes, we can have headstarting programmes and perimeter and predator proof fences to protect lapwing and other species but we are really at nothing unless we tackle the root cause of this, which is economic growth. That is our global economic system and financial flows from countries like Ireland into polluting industries and fossil fuels. This is a bigger picture for all of us. It is important that as a Government we must lead on that.

I thank the Irish Environmental Network. I want people to go out and enjoy nature in their locality because it is everywhere, as Senator Fitzpatrick said. Even here in Dublin city centre amazing work is being done. Let us go out and enjoy it. People should go out and enjoy biodiversity week. They should go out and appreciate it and when they have done that, they should lobby their politicians to ensure we increase the spending and continue to invest in nature and our wonderful National Parks and Wildlife Service.