Oisín O'Neill

It's hugely damaging and people in Ireland are grieving that we have no native woodlands.

at school level so clearly it was the schools themselves that decided to accept and distribute this um this book or this booklet well my understanding was distributed to the schools and then the schools can either accept the book or throw it in the bin and i understand the department is is making they don't want to be linked with this and it definitely came out of the blue um

But yeah, it was up to the schools and I would hope that many of the schools would want their children to have a balanced understanding of nature and would not be letting this industry aligned messaging into their schools.

Yes, of course.

But what we are saying, biodiversity loss is a fact.

It's a scientific fact.

It's widely accepted.

If you look at this book, it makes no mention of the negative impacts of Sitka spruce plantations.

It talks about how great Sitka spruce is, how it lives in a forest full of nature.

And this isn't factual.

If you walk in a Sitka spruce plantation, it's lifeless.

It's dead.

There's no nature in there.

What we would put into schools if we were to do that would be educational, would be giving the full picture, would be giving children a balanced understanding with a view towards educating them on the importance of biodiversity, on the importance of nature for people, for the world we live within.

We're calling on the department to address this, yes.

That would be at the discretion of the department, whether they would like to recall the book.

I'm no education expert.

I don't know if they have the power to do that.

So an education expert will be able to tell you the answer to that.