Mr. Declan Byrne:

The Deputy has raised many issues. He asked the reason the systems of sheep production changed. The biggest reason was that what people were doing was not making money. The nature of sheep production has changed. Years ago, when people were actively farming the hills, there was no such thing as spring lamb. Now everyone is pushing for spring lamb. In County Wicklow we had a market for the Suffolk Cheviot cross ewe lamb, but, again, that trade has died off and it is not as profitable as it used to be.

The Deputy has asked the reason farmers began to bring sheep down off the hills and feed them away from them.

They were taking grass on the flatlands in Kildare and putting sheep away for the winter because it was easier and more profitable for them to do so. That is what happened. As a result, it is difficult to get the sheep to graze on the hills. Unless someone is putting sheep out on the hills every year, they stand inside the gate and wait to be fed. That is the problem.

Before we came in here I spoke to Mr. Dunne about it. He is one of the few farmers left in Wicklow who puts ewes with lambs to the hill. From an economic point of view, we were wondering whether he should do it at all. I do not know whether he should because then his lambs are smaller and it is less profitable. Leading on from that, Mr. Dunne asked should we change our ewe type completely and opt for a different type of ewe that is hardier and that we could leave on the hills. Maybe that is a solution. These are the issues we were looking at and we have had many discussions at our meetings about them. Definitely, that is something that has to change. As I stated earlier, the timing of the sheep grazing the hill has a significant impact on what they do to the heather and it is important to take sheep back down at the different times of the year. Someone mentioned earlier the branding of Wicklow lamb. Perhaps there should be some such scheme, but we must get the sheep with the lambs onto the hills during the summer and get the ewes back out for the winter grazing. If that involves a change in ewe type or a change in product we are selling, that will have to be worked on. We do not have the answers to this. We ourselves came up with these questions but we do not have the answers. We were looking for a study to get some answers to this.

Mention was made of measuring the condition of the hills and paying farmers on that basis. That is the system which works in the Burren. Unfortunately, we in Wicklow can draw up what we think are the best plans and tell farmers what will happen if they go out to do so, but that might not happen at all. The reason what happened in the Burren worked so successfully is they started with a great deal of research behind them and the schemes were built one on top of the other. This built up confidence among the planners drawing up the plans that they knew what would be the result if they drew up a plan and told a farmer to do something, and farmers were also confident that such would be the case. Farmers would not buy into extending such a scheme over the whole of the uplands areas because they would be afraid someone would come out to assess it. Definitely, it is something towards which we could work in the long term, but farmers would want some guaranteed payment at the start and maybe work towards being paid in the future on the basis of the condition of the hills regardless of how they do it.

Everyone keeps coming back to this question of Pillars 1 and 2. In talking among ourselves here, we have a big fear with compensating farmers under Pillar 1. In the past, under Pillar 1 a farmer had to comply with GAEC. There were minimum stocking rates for the sheep and the hills had to be kept in a certain condition with regard to invasive species, heather, overgrowth, etc. There has not been much policing of this in that one can tell a farmer that he or she must hold a number of sheep between a certain range, but who will go out to the hills to count them to see whether the farmer is putting them out or not? That is a big issue. The other aspect, with a great deal of heather on the hills, is that if one tells farmers they will lose their single farm payments if they do not control the heather on that hill, the danger is they will set fire to it and burn the whole hill. The following year the hill will start to green up again and they will be laughing. They will be fine for the next few years because there will be vegetation on the hill and they will qualify for the payment.

What we are talking about in the scheme here separately is that we tell the farmers exactly what we want. We want a long-term approach to this. It is not a simple overnight answer. For burning, we are talking about it on a 15 to 20 year rotation. We are talking here about telling farmers to get back out on the hills with sheep at certain times of the year and for that we need a specific scheme for compensating the farmers. We are telling them exactly what they have to do in order to get that funding whereas if one were talking about paying it out under Pillar 1, there would be very loose regulations where the gain for the hills would be questionable. We would probably end up with a system such as REPS where farmers got the funding but there was no advantage on the hills. That is our big fear and that is why we are proposing that there would be funding set aside specifically for these upland schemes. That is our issue in that regard.

The active farmer question is a tricky one. I was involved in a group talking among ourselves about these hills and other matters and it is difficult to come up with a definition of an active farmer who qualifies for the payment. In our scheme, we were talking about taking a collective approach in which those on the entire commonage would join the scheme together. Within that, as Deputy Ó Cuív stated, some farmers may not want to put any sheep to the hills. Others may want to put more to the hills. I was involved with the new agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, before Christmas and we had a situation on a commonage where one farmer was told he had to put an extra 100 sheep on the hills to qualify for AEOS payments while his next door neighbour was told he had to take 150 off it. If we take a whole of commonage approach, if farmers want to decide among themselves that one will put up more than another that should be the way it goes. Our definition of active farmers then would be someone who is contributing towards our scheme in terms of controlling and managing the hills for the future if that involves the farmer putting sheep to the hill. If that involves the farmer getting somebody else to put his or her share of the sheep up to the hills, maybe the farmer is also an active farmer in that he or she is contributing towards the hills for the future. It is a grey area. As I say, one must look at individual farmers. If one has ten farmers on a commonage and one gets six of them into the scheme who do everything, it all could be completely undone by the other four who do not join the scheme. That is why we are looking at it on a whole of commonage approach.

That addresses most of it. As for who gets paid, that is also a way to bring in and encourage young farmers. If some of the older shareholders are not interested in putting sheep to the hills, maybe they can encourage young lads to come in to do the herding and put their own sheep up for older shareholders. That is why we are looking at having a whole of commonage approach. That is a new system that has not been tried here previously. It has been done in England. It is a more complex system but merely because it is complex does not mean that it is not more appropriate. That is our view on it.