I formally second the introduction of the Bill to protect our native Irish honey bee. I am glad that we have the Minister of State from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with us today because this is a most important issue. We are at a crisis point in the context of protecting our native Irish honey bee. It is most important. The bee is a small creature, but this is not a small issue. It is about time that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine looked beyond beekeeping as a mere hobby. It is integral to agriculture and food production in this country. The Department needs to move beyond the hobby mentality and see what beekeepers have known for generations, namely, that beekeeping is inextricably linked to food production. This matter should be a priority for the Department. While we have the Minister of State here, I wish to highlight that we should be looking towards counting active beehives as a unit of livestock. This would assist both beekeepers and farmers to achieve what we need, which is to protect our native bee stock and to realise what is laid out in our all-Ireland pollinator plan. It is most important. I thank Senator Martin for his work on the Bill.

Recently, I spoke in the Chamber about an intensive dairy farmer who does not use chemical fertilisers to grow his grass. Describing how he feeds his cows on a multispecies sward, a mix of grasses, clovers and herbs, I said that I hoped I was seeing the future in the way that he and his family were farming. Since then, in budget 2022, my Department has allocated €1 million to pilot a reseeding programme. We want to support farmers to use multispecies sward seed at no extra cost in order that they can try growing nitrogen-free crops too. I really hope farmers give this a go, because I continue to see more examples of productive pasture management without chemical nitrogen, which instills confidence in me that this can be the future.

Synthetic fertilisers deplete the soil of nutrients and will eventually kill it by destroying its natural functionality. While this may take a long time, and our Irish soils may be a long way from death, in the end, synthetic fertiliser, if we apply enough for long enough, will not just continue to pollute our rivers and air, it will turn our soil barren such that nothing will grow. That is simply a fact. It is a fact which does not have to fill us with dread because while chemical nitrogen helps grass grow, so does naturally fixed nitrogen, but without the damage. Clover is a really effective and natural nitrogen-fixing machine.

I have seen some of the work, enthusiasm and results. Teagasc is doing work on clover at Moorepark and Solohead Farm, while in Johnstown Castle, it has carried out years of research on multispecies swards, to see if adding in herbs can make the grazing even better and the carbon sequestration more effective and improve the soil microbial activity.

Yes, a multispecies sward is managed differently to a monoculture sward. In some ways, it might be more challenging, but in other ways it is easier.

I certainly believe it is worth a try, not just for the potential savings in fertiliser costs, but also for the satisfaction we can all derive from healthy soils and from feeding our animals and land in a way which works for them and us and for the climate challenges ahead. This is the future.