Joe Conway (Independent)

Apart from the personalities, yes. It is regrettable that the midlands are not taken into the equation for as long as these considerations are being made. One of my treasured childhood memories is lying in bed at night in rural Ardagh, County Longford, and listening to the sound of the corncrake. I thought the corncrake had disappeared from the country completely. However, a couple of years ago I had the good fortune to take a week's holiday in Inishbofin and when I got off the ferry, the first thing I heard was the incessant sawing sound of the corncrake. I believe the only other place the corncrake is extant now is in the area of the Shannon Callows in Offaly. Just like what Senator Flaherty said about the canals and wildlife, there is an inherent potential for that sort of investment in the midlands. However welcome Centre Parcs is in Longford, we would love a bit of nature there as well. Even though I am supposedly speaking up for my people down in Waterford, my adopted county, I still think the midlands is somewhat neglected in that regard. This may be something that the Minister of State and his team could look at as we move forward.

I am going to shift completely from that whole business to something I noticed in my years as a teacher and principal in County Waterford. When I arrived at the school, we got little bits of garden around it that were started in conjunction with the caretaker. It was not long before I noticed the rehabilitative effect this had on some of my more recidivistic pupils. On a Friday afternoon, one of the most joyous things these bold boys could do was go out into the garden and get stuck in. Not all of it was entirely productive or generative of growth, but it really added to the growth of those youngsters who maybe came from the wrong side of the tracks.

We can extrapolate that to the 5,500 people we have in prisons in Ireland and then look at the proliferation of our national parks. Maybe it exists already - and I am not aware of it - but what about the possibility of linking the two? We heard a good bit during the presidential election campaign about whether an individual had or hand not been rehabilitated. The big question that is asked is whether prison rehabilitates people. An experiment was carried out at Rikers Island in New York, which is probably one of the biggest penal colonies in the world. There is a system of gardening and horticultural work in the prison, and if people show a propensity to enjoy these things and develop themselves as a result, they are given a pathway to internships in federal national parks around the USA. Maybe we are missing an opportunity there, because mental health concerns and the threat of suicide in our prisons have hugely increased over the past few years.

It is an unanswerable case that nature and participation in enjoying the flora and fauna of the country, working as a team in generating growth, preserving plants and seeing species introduced are beneficial. We all realise, no matter how evil or distorted a person’s background has been, that these opportunities would be huge if people were given a chance to work with the Minister of State’s teams. I may be just demonstrating my ignorance because maybe this already exists. If it does, should be advanced because for a country with a population the size of ours to have almost 6,000 people locked up, sometimes for 23 hours a day, is so non-productive. I saw in the newspaper yesterday that it costs €100,000 per annum to keep one prisoner. Members can do the math on that. The overall sum involved is huge. What if we could divert that money to something more productive like internships or having people released on licence to work in the national parks? Obviously, we would not have the really bad criminals out there because that would not be safe, but it would not be beyond the knowledge and experience of the people who maintain the prisons to make a good shot at guessing who would be eligible or suitable for these programmes.

I have a final thing to say on a completely different matter. We tend to get communities all over the country asking particular places or areas are not turned being turned in national parks. I was probably guilty of doing that in the few words I said earlier. We should bear in mind that not every place in the country should be turned into a national park. You can over-manicure the wildlife and the natural resources of any country, and we should be aware of that as well.