Dr. James Moran:

I wish to speak about the roll-out of this on a national basis. When I qualified from college, I started in the Burren Farm for Conservation Programme. I was working with Teagasc at the time and I learned all I know about farming for conservation from the Burren farmers. I also had a national role in Teagasc as part of the specialist service and the advisory services. Through my national role I could see how it could be rolled out throughout the country. When the BurrenLIFE programme finished, I moved to Sligo IT and the vast majority of the research in which I am involved there concentrates on how these programmes could be rolled out across the country through the Common Agriculture Policy reform and the rural development programme. The model that has been applied in the Burren is equally applicable anywhere across the country, even in commonage areas. Commonage areas might have more issues relating to governance and administration because, instead of dealing with just one farmer, they involve dealing with groups of farmers together. Under the proposed rural development programmes and the regulations proposed by the European Commission, there are certain articles within pillar 2, called co-operation articles, that can be used to facilitate farmers to co-operate together and pay them additional transaction costs for that co-operation.

The new commonage framework plans propose a new minimum and maximum. This programme can also solve that problem. When ecologists look at each commonage area, they have a vision of what appropriate condition is under the habitats directive. Based on scientific papers that have been published in the UK, they have come up with this minimum and maximum rate, which is not necessarily granted to all commonage areas - all individual parcels are quite different from each other. We can use this programme because it gives a picture of what is an ideal condition. In all these areas the farmers also know when their particular commonage was in that ideal condition. They know how they farmed at that particular time and a programme such as this can support them to deliver that type of environment again through a certain type of farming.

The simple measures we have applied here can be applied across the country. It is quite simple. There are output-based measures where payment is based on output. There needs to be agreement between the farmers, colleges and Government on the desired output. Once that output is agreed, the farmers can then come together with their advisers and outline how they will produce it. That can be costed and paid for based on a scoring system. It is also possible to put the capital works in place to support it. Many commonage areas throughout the country have certain scrub issues, particularly with rhododendron which is a non-native invasive species that can be controlled in exactly the same way as hazel. The scrub-control measures can be directly adapted to rhododendron control. It is possible for the grazing practice to mirror the output grazing system that is in the Burren. It is also possible to facilitate other additional capital works that are in the Burren in terms of managing stock in any other area of the country.

I see it as quite simple. I live quite close to the Burren but work in Sligo. I drive the N17 all the way up the west coast twice a week. I visit farms in Donegal, Leitrim and Sligo with my research students on a regular basis and have also been in Wicklow recently. In all farms in any of these parts of the country this model can be applied. To my mind, it is quite simple and I do not envisage a problem with it. On the commonage issue, with a number of advisers from different counties that have commonages, we arranged a study tour to Scotland and northern England in May.

There is commonage in every county of the country. Some areas have more than others but every county has some commonage. We put a report together on the lessons there. They are not acting perfectly by any stretch of the imagination in Scotland or England, but by marrying the best practice from Ireland, Scotland and England I would argue that we can come up with one of the best examples of commonage management and wider farming for conservation across the European Union.

In 2011, the European Court of Auditors produced a report on agri-environment schemes across Europe that criticised them for not being monitored, not being cost effective and not being targeted. In all the European Commission reports on the Burren, it holds the Burren Farming for Conservation Programme up as a solution to the issues that have been identified by the European Court of Auditors. We have the best example in Europe. We are held up by Europe as the best at something. Why can we not merely role it out to the rest of the country?