Nature is worryingly absent from the National Development Plan review

It is imperative that nature is adequately funded, writes Ciarán Brennan, communications officer at the Irish Environmental Network

Hazel woodland is as rich in biodiversity as any Irish habitat. Nature is conspicuous by its absence in the National Development Plan. File picture: Pádraic Fogarty

Albert Einstein once said, look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. But even somebody with the cerebral capacity of Einstein would struggle to understand and get their head around the latest National Development Plan. 

This is a plan which purports to chart the progress of the country over the coming years, but which bizarrely fails to allocate any finance to nature in the middle of, what our current Taoiseach had referred to as, a biodiversity crisis.