Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I do not know who the Senator was talking to, and I know he does not expect me to bash the Commission, which would not be in the best interests of Ireland or the Department of agriculture, but their perspective is that there is a legal framework agreed by member states. Member states agreed the law at European Union level. It is done between the Council, the Parliament and the Commission. It is a co-decision procedure now, and we have a habitats directive and a water framework directive, and that is the law. Overlayered with that, they will look at our record on peat soils and emissions, the commitments that are made to cut emissions, and how well member states across the European Union are doing with regard to cutting emissions. That is a legitimate perspective.

I can tell the Senator that for every person who thinks that the conditions of this programme are too onerous, there is a person who thinks they are not half onerous enough. That is in Ireland; you do not have to go to the European Union to get that. We went through a period when every single forestry licence was being appealed, and we are going through a period now when we have massive numbers of AIEs, which are like FOIs for forestry. We have massive numbers of AIEs coming from a very small number of individuals about our forestry applications. This is contested stuff and people are coming at it from various angles. They all have legitimate views and we have to try to strike a balance.

On top of the regulatory framework at European Union level, we had to get state aid approval. The state aid approval was used as a vehicle to apply conditionality to our scheme. In essence, we were told we were being given permission to spend funding on forestry and to support it but it comes with conditionality. They have used the legal framework and the state aid approval mechanism. They have their own legitimate views on what conditionality should be applied here. That is the reality of what we are dealing with, and I understand that people have different views on the legal framework. However, I would just say that laws at European Union level do not come down from heaven. They are agreed by members states and ministers. They are proposed by the Commission, and there is co-decision with the Parliament. All of those elements go into making laws at European Union level. They are not imposed on us. We might not like the balance of whatever emerges from a very complex negotiation. Sometimes we do not like it, and sometimes we do. Sometimes we exert significant influence, and sometimes we exert less influence but that is the way the system works. I would not want this to turn into a session where we say the Commission is the root of all evil. It operates on the basis of a legal framework that is agreed by member states.