Noonan: No new money for Nature Restoration in Budget 2026
Heritage sector will be running to stand still despite huge growth in recent years.
Reacting to Budget 2026, Green Party Spokesperson for Nature, Heritage, Agriculture and the Marine, Senator Malcolm Noonan said that there is no new money for nature restoration in Budget 2026 and that farm organisations were ready to walk away from the development of a nature restoration plan due to the raiding of the Climate and Nature Fund earlier in the year.
‘I really thought that Government would have found the €650m promised to nature in budget 2026, but it seems not. Is it in the ACRES expansion or the additional capital for heritage? Vague commitments to address to the C&N fund, will do nothing to restore the confidence of farmers that this is a collective effort and I really fear that they will step back from the process’.
He said that with previously committed capital money stripped out of the headline figure, the heritage budget was running to stand still.
Senator Noonan said that while there was a welcome uplift for the Nature in the budget, it’s not enough and that Government needs to recognise that the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is an organisation twice the size it was in 2020, with two new National Parks to manage and develop, a lot of newly purchased land and it has to lead on a National Nature Restoration Plan.
‘NPWS needs to grow further and faster to meet all of these commitments. Similarly, we have a worsening water quality situation, highlighted by Lady’s Island and the devastating Blackwater fish kill. We need significant additional resources to get on top of this through the Water Action Plan’.
He also questioned the commitment to the National Biodiversity Data Centre, saying it needed significant investment to meet the data management requirements for the Nature Restoration Plan and land use generally.
Senator Noonan said that the heritage budget has remained virtually static. ‘The Built and Archaeological Heritage sector has grown massively under our term of office. Yet, the National Monuments Service and National Built Heritage Service have largely been ignored with little uplift. This despite a huge appetite to restore and conserve historic buildings and monuments and a growth in those training towards traditional skills. Bodies under the aegis of the department such as the Heritage Council have gotten crumbs from the table and I fear that many programmes and the expansion of heritage teams in local authorities will have to be curtailed’.
Senator Noonan welcomed the decision by Government to take an element from a Green Party bill, to tackle dereliction.
‘I think that moving the collection of the Residential Zoned Land Tax to Revenue is good and was part of our bill that government previously rejected. It is important to now have a clear definition of dereliction to prevent owners of properties from avoiding the tax. This was part of our bill too. He also welcomed the extension of the living cities initiative to other urban centres.
‘A static heritage budget means no new architectural conservation officers and inadequate grants to restore and realise the potential for housing of older buildings in our town centres. It’s clear they don’t really get the real value of heritage to either the Irish economy or socially to communities around the country’, he concluded.
