National Parks and Wildlife Service
Seanad Éireann — 2022-01-27
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Malcolm Noonan (GP), Carlow-Kilkenny

I thank the Senator for raising this Commencement matter. I will try to outline the trajectory in terms of the report referenced in The Sunday Times and where it fits into the bigger piece of work that we have been doing over recent months. My portfolio as Minister of State with responsibility for heritage and electoral reform is an expansive one. The top priority for me on becoming Minister of State was to restore heritage funding, placing nature, heritage and biodiversity at the heart of what this Government does well, taking a whole-of-government approach.
As the Senator has outlined, the NPWS is a crucial service that is mandated with the protection, conservation and presentation of our natural heritage, including the variety of birds, mammals, invertebrates, fungi and plants that combine in the dynamic ecosystems that give us vital services that society and the economy depend on, such as soil fertility, water purification, carbon sequestration and storage and, of course, that sense of peace and wonder that so many of us enjoy when we experience nature. In 2019, we learned that globally many of our protected habitats were of poor or inadequate status and that almost half were declining. That same year, the Dáil declared a climate and biodiversity emergency. At that time NPWS resourcing was not sufficient to address the challenge that lay ahead with the level of urgency that was required.
I determined that a hallmark of my tenure as Minister of State would be to leave a positive legacy for biodiversity in Ireland, to deliver on the Government's unprecedented ambition for nature and to respond comprehensively to the programme for Government commitment to strengthen the NPWS, improve its effectiveness and make it the voice for nature that we need it to be. The primary determinant in all of that is resourcing. I secured additional moneys in the 2020 July stimulus, significantly increased NPWS funding by almost 50% in budget 2021 and, in October 2021, as part of the budget, announced that NPWS funding would increase yet again to over €47 million in 2022, a total increase of 64% since I became Minister of State. That brought it back up to pre-financial crisis levels in terms of staffing and resources.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2022-01-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-01-27