Dr. Andy Bleasdale:

This is the nut that must be cracked. How do you bring the farming community with you because certainly if it owns the land, we cannot manage the land without its involvement? The challenge then is how we confer value on the land, have the right supports through advisers, incentivise and pay. I would stop short of saying the word "compensation". I do not think the Deputy said it either. It is about rewarding farmers for the delivery of ecosystem goods and services that the State wants to see achieved be it through the delivery of the conservation objectives, lighter-touch grazing or slightly elevating water levels. This does have an impact on production. Production must become less intensive if that is the objective that needs to be delivered on that parcel of land in the Shannon Callows, the Burren or anywhere else we might have mentioned. It concerns the instrument to achieve that change and the communication of that change without it being seen as a stick being wielded by the State to stop farming. If that narrative gets out there, we have lost the argument and the likes of the national biodiversity action plan cannot be delivered. We need to work with people.

Farmers are people and need to be supported. We need to work with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to provide the right incentives and we need to have a fund that manages and delivers that change over time. It is about a partnership approach that includes people at the front of that discussion. We cannot have a situation where they are excluded and a solution presented to them that they do not believe can be delivered. It must be done in dialogue and partnership with local people on the ground in these important high-nature-value landscapes.