Joe Flaherty (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State for a very informative overview, and commend him on the passion and enthusiasm he has brought to the role. If anyone was to be asked what Ministry they would like, it was like Santa and Christmas for him when he got this brief. There are few Ministers in the House as passionate about their portfolio as him. He has certainly hit the ground running. He brings immense knowledge to this area, to the betterment of Ireland as a nation and rural Ireland as a whole. It would be remiss of me not to commend the efforts of his predecessor, who is now a Member of this House. Senator Noonan did significant work in this area and I was very proud to work alongside him in the lifetime of the previous Dáil. He put a lot of the building blocks in place that the Minister of State is now going to follow through on. It would be reasonable to say that one of the untold successes of the previous Government was the progress we made in this area. We need to see that momentum continue. I know Senator Noonan was very much to the fore in a number of the new national parks. It was very much through his initiative and vision that it is happening. We need to build on that momentum.

We do not have a national freshwater park at the moment. It will be no secret to the Minister of State that I will be making the case that it should be Lough Ree, particularly those lands around Lough Ree that are close to County Longford. The Minister of State visited the area recently as part of a national conference that took place in Athlone. He met some people who are involved in promoting that project. We have islands in Lough Ree where people still lived up to 50 years ago. Indeed, we have a TD in the Lower House, Deputy Brennan, whose grandfather was one of the last residents of one of those islands in Lough Ree, and subsequently moved to Galway. We have made significant progress in farming in terms of the environmental challenge, particularly through the offices of the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES. There is an opportunity for us, through the national parklands scheme, to look at a more pure and wholesome method of farming that even goes beyond what we are doing in ACRES. We have a great opportunity to revert to farming in what was its purest and most simple form through that. We have an opportunity with Lough Ree and its islands to look at sustainable farming in its purest form. We could look at bringing back some of the rare cattle breeds. We have the traditional Irish goat which was almost extinct, but good work has been done on bringing it back. Both of those species can cohabit there reasonably well. We have the traditional Irish cob, on which some work has been done as well. We can do a lot of work on safeguarding and building on that through a national park in the midlands and specifically around Lough Ree.

I have once concern in relation to the National Association of Regional Game Councils. It would be fair to say we had our battles with the Minister of State's predecessor. The Minister of State has come on board. Senator Noonan worked hard on it and the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, has taken on the mantle as well. The association was surprised, in response to a question in the Lower House, when the Minister of State, Deputy Collins, was replying to a query and confirmed that a review of the memorandum of understanding is to take place. That came as a great surprise to the National Association of Regional Game Councils. It was the first the NARGC had heard of it. Obviously, it is taking the Minister of State's bona fides at face value. It has seen the positive work his office has done, particularly in the area of the mink eradication programme, and the significant progress we have seen in respect of breeding waders. It is unfortunate that the NARGC has heard about this process in this way. The Minister of State's officials need to engage with it and give it some degree of reassurance. We need a collegial process and to work together.

The Minister of State comes from Cork so he knows we have a problem with TB in this country. One of those issues is the badger. Longford is the worst county in the country in the scale of the problem that we have. Large numbers of farmers are affected. The problem is to the fore now because of the value of cattle; the compensation farmers are getting is in no way commensurate with what the cattle are actually worth. We have come to the point where we have to look at what we are going to do with the badger population in Ireland and what its future is. I will go back to Lough Ree again; we have badgers on one of the islands there which are causing major problems for ground-nesting birds. Basically there are no ground-nesting birds on that island because of the badger. There should be no badgers on the island. It is impossible to know how a badger got onto an island but there are badgers there, but that is another story. As a country, we need to look at what we are going to do with the badger population. We have to consider some measure to try to contain it. We are paying a major price in terms of our farming community, particularly our small, rural communities.

There are an awful lot of positives and huge scope for work that can be done in this area. We have what I would consider to be mainstream commercial farming that has moved into that space of environmental farming. As a country that values rural Ireland and the rural way of life, we have an opportunity, through the Minister of State's good offices, to look at sustainable farming. The ideal model to start that would be to have a freshwater national park in Lough Ree and then look at having a sustainable farming model on its islands.

I would be interested to get the Minister of State's views on the fact that large sections of the Royal Canal and the Grand Canal have never been opened, particularly on the outskirts of Longford town. Given the amount of money that would be involved, it is unlikely they will ever be opened. Over the last 20 to 30 years, a natural nature reserve has almost grown within those canals. I know it does not look like it, but I was running out there last Saturday morning - at incredible speed - and I counted three hawks on a 5 km run, several foxes and several other species of birds. I was stopped by one local man who was incensed that Waterways Ireland had come and cut out a large swathe of trees that there was no reason to cut at all. It would be a positive event if the canal were to reopen, but in the event of it not reopening, could we designate that as a nature reserve?