In my opinion, heaven's garden on earth is our national park in Killarney. It is Ireland's oldest national park and covers 26,000 acres of mountains, lakes, woodland and heath. The nucleus of the national park is 4,300 ha. Unfortunately, a fire started there last Friday and lasted for three days. Between 2,500 and 3,000 ha are believed to have been damaged or destroyed in the fire, including an active hen harrier habitat and the hunting grounds of three or more of the extremely rare birds which live in the park. That is devastating for the ecosystem. It is the worst fire in the national park since 1984.

I thank Kerry County Council's fire service for the excellent work it did. I also thank the staff of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, the Air Corps, the Garda, Civil Defence and local emergency groups. I also thank local volunteers, those people who came out in places which I adore, such as the Black Valley. I also thank all the other organisations and local volunteers from the tourism and boating sectors. All these people rallied together to try to save our national park.

In a proactive rather than reactionary way, I went on the record of the Dáil seeking more resources to be given to the NPWS to manage our park. I will explain why. We all know it is a beautiful place but the national park is a living thing I am passionate about. Examples of what we need are more wildlife rangers and more workers on the ground to do the maintenance and repairs and undertake the care the park needs. A national park is a living and breathing thing. We cannot look at it, say it is beautiful and we have thousands of acres of it and conclude that all is fine and the park will mind itself. It does not mind itself. I know the Taoiseach appreciates good things, including the countryside. I respectfully ask him, as the Head of Government, to tell his Ministers to put the additional resources we need in place.

No one in Kerry, least of all me, was impressed when Ministers tried to make a photo opportunity of running down to Kerry and standing on a rock in water trying to make out everything was great now that they were there. Why were they not there when I was looking for additional funding for the NPWS and when I said the number of wildlife rangers had fallen from ten or 12 to five and that at one time we had more than 100 people in total working in the national park? We will be down now to less than half that figure. We need resources and I am asking the Taoiseach to provide those resources.

I thank the Deputy for raising this serious issue. Without question, the devastation in Killarney National Park over the weekend, which we all saw on our television screens, was absolutely devastating. It was heartbreaking to see such a beautiful area impacted so severely. It is estimated that about 2,500 ha, which is close to half of the terrestrial area of the habitat, have been extensively damaged. As the Deputy said, that is having a severe impact on flora and fauna. More work is being done to quantify the extent of the damage to the national park.

I extend my deepest appreciation to the NPWS, Kerry fire service, the Air Corps, An Garda Síochána, Killarney Water Rescue and the local meitheal, all of whom worked tirelessly and to extraordinary levels to quench the fires at the weekend. They did heroic work and saved a lot. The cause of the fire is still under investigation and the NPWS will be following up with other authorities, including the Kerry fire service, to ascertain the circumstances surrounding the blaze. The fire spread very rapidly due to the prevailing weather conditions and the cost to wildlife is immeasurable. Thankfully, there was no loss to human life and we welcome that aspect of it.

Spontaneous fires are not a natural phenomenon in Ireland, so the circumstances regarding how this fire started need to be determined. There will be a comprehensive investigation in that regard. I accept the Deputy's point around the need for a strong, visible presence on the ground to discourage and prevent any unauthorised burning in the countryside and to protect the park. Funding for the NPWS has nearly doubled this year. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Minister of State with responsibility for heritage and electoral reform, Deputy Noonan, have decided to accelerate the recruitment of wildlife rangers and to increase the national intake from the recruitment campaign that is under way to 60 new wildlife rangers. That was announced yesterday, and it will mean a significant addition to the NPWS team. That will respond in a positive way to the issues raised by the Deputy.

It was important that the Minister and Minister of State went to the park yesterday to see the damage at first hand and also to pay tribute to all those involved in working to quench the fire. I thank the Department and Niall Ó Donnchú, with whom I was in constant contact throughout the weekend, for his commitment and the commitment of everybody in trying to deal with this situation. It is heartbreaking to see our beautiful national park in Killarney impacted so negatively and severely as a result of this fire.

When we get new wildlife rangers, and please God we will, I suggest that retired rangers who gave a lifetime of service be brought back in for a time to impart the wealth of knowledge they built up over decades of working in the national park to the new wildlife rangers. That is one suggestion. We also need to bring in scientifically qualified people to go through the burned areas. We must learn a lot about what we are going to do about the situation on the ground and scientific research must be done in that regard. We have young students suitably qualified in environmental courses in University College Cork, UCC, and the Institute of Technology Tralee, ITT. I ask that during the summer these people be given the experience of working in the burned areas of the national park researching those data and trying to help us in future.

It is believed this fire started late of an evening, which is worrying. We need to establish why this has become such a common occurrence. It is nearly as sure as night follows day that we will have fires at the end of a dry spell, in particular in the national park. This fire took a real hold.

I am very grateful that 60 wildlife rangers are coming, as the Taoiseach stated. As I told him, we have five wildlife rangers now. If we were given five, six or seven more from the 60 recruited nationally, we would be extremely grateful.

The Taoiseach should not give the impression that 60 wildlife rangers are coming to Kerry, because if that was the case I would be jumping for joy at this moment. I am sure the Taoiseach is not going to give us all 60. On one final point, we need more general operatives on the ground.

I will feed back the Deputy's comments to the Minister and Department. I think 60 is a significant increase. Funding for the NPWS doubled in the budget. This is an area in which I am interested. I want to support the Minister and Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, in respect of the NPWS to give it stronger capacity in future in terms of our wildlife, national parks and biodiversity.

The Deputy has made a very good suggestion on utilising this terrible event perhaps to provide for a specific research-type project that would involve supervised research students and seek to understand the impact of fires on habitat, but also mechanisms that we can develop to restore the habitat as quickly as we possibly can. That is a good idea and I certainly will talk to the Minister and Minister of State to see if something can be developed on that score.

It is not for me to comment on operational issues around recruitment and so on but it is always the case that the knowledge of the experienced person can be of value to the new recruit.