Dr. Brendan Dunford:

On behalf of my colleagues and myself, I thank the committee for the invitation to attend the meeting today. I will be fairly brief with the opening statement as I just want to provide some sense of what this programme is about and why I hope it will be of interest to the committee.

The Burren farming conservation programme takes place in the west of Ireland in the Burren, which has a magical landscape. It is all about helping to conserve Ireland's rural communities, environment and heritage, in which we all share an interest. I will speak about a case study of the Burren, which is a national treasure, and consider some of the problems affecting the area and solutions that we have developed to address those problems. I will discuss the impact of the scheme we have formulated and its cost, as well as how the model might be scaled for other parts of the country, such as Connemara, Wicklow and Kildare. I will finish by outlining our goals and vision.

The Burren is a UNESCO supported so-called geopark, which is famous for geological heritage. It is located in the mid-west and is an important archaeological landscape. It is on Ireland's tentative list of world heritage sites and contains over 70% of Ireland's native plant species, with over half of the Burren designated as a special area of conservation as a consequence. It is also very much a farmed landscape, owned and managed by farmers over the past 5,500 years. One of those farmers is sitting beside me and is pictured in the circulated documentation herding his cattle over the Burren. This is a farmed landscape, as is most of our country, which is important to remember. Sometimes we forget that fact. A very unusual farming practice takes place in the Burren called "winterage". I do not have time to speak about it but if members wish to visit the area, we can show it in action. Like most of our places, the Burren is worth looking after.

How can we do this? There are a number of problems affecting places like the Burren. There is a picture of an ideal scenario, with species-rich grassland, in the documentation but with too little farming that can quickly revert to scrub, with many species and much archaeology lost. That can arise from population decline, and we have lost perhaps 75% of our farmers over the past 40 or 50 years. The other extreme is too much farming, which arises when farmers work off-farm and must adopt new technologies and greater efficiencies. That can also damage the Burren's environment. We really want to restore the balance as there has been a loss in the balance of land use right across Ireland and Europe in the past four decades. Generally, that is bad news in the long term for farming, heritage, wildlife and society. We must restore balance in areas like the Burren and elsewhere.

What are the solutions? There are national level solutions like designations but they tend to be too restrictive and limit what farmers can do in many cases. There are national schemes like REPS, which for places like the Burren, Connemara and Wicklow are a little generic, as they are not a targeted process. With the support of the Irish Farmers Association, Teagasc, the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine as a whole, we decided to formulate our own solution. We researched this through a programme called BurrenLIFE, which is a locally targeted solutions-led approach to solving problems.

These problems include the feeding of silage. Rather than banning the feeding of silage, Dr. James Moran led the development of a concentrate ration which cuts out the feeding of silage and increases grazing, leading to more biodiversity, better water quality, cheaper feeding costs and a more efficient farming system. Scrub encroachment is another issue and that has been tackled by Dr. Sharon Parr, and we have removed approximately 150 hectares of scrub using different techniques and methodologies, putting a cost on every different one. That is an important process which is transforming the Burren.

Water pollution is a big issue and rather than keeping cattle off the land, we are protecting existing water sources and developing new sources of water with rainwater harvesters, and water systems powered by solar and wind power, etc. For every problem there is a solution, and they call came from farmers, with scientists implementing the processes and monitoring the impact. It has worked well.

From this five years of research, using European funding, we produced a set of guidelines for farmers in the Burren regarding how to best manage land for food production and conservation. We won the "Best of the Best" award for Life Nature Projects in Europe for 2010 and, more importantly, we got funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to roll out this research project across 160 farms in the Burren. This new programme is unique and is called the Burren farming for conservation programme. It is a first for Ireland and we are three years into it. It has been a significant success and I will spend a couple of minutes outlining why this is so.

The programme is about tailored solutions rooted in the best interests of the land and its people. We are funded through pillar one by article 68.1 of Council Regulation EC 73/2009, unspent single farm payment money, and the Department has allocated €1 million per annum to the Burren over the past three years. There are approximately 160 farms participating in the process, and they can receive the payment on top of REPS or AEOS payments. It is a higher level programme.

The process aims to improve the habitats, water quality and heritage of the Burren. It is an environmental rather than social scheme and by delivering on the environment, we can benefit farmers, who are working with the programme. The process is delivered by a project team including myself, Dr. Parr and our colleague, Dr. Bryony Williams, on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. There are 12 trained farm advisers who do the farm plans, and there is a very simple planning system because we have cut out all the paper and bureaucracy. Instead of having a thick plan, there is a simple three-page plan which tells the farmer everything he or she needs to know. We can provide the committee with a copy.

The programme is unique and does not happen elsewhere in north-west Europe. It is simple, as it should be, and it is highly innovative, as we will demonstrate momentarily. It is very inclusive, and we work with farmers, conservationists, personnel from the Department and everybody else. It is very integrated and complies with all the directives taking in habitats, the water framework, nitrates, etc. We are proud to say it has had an impact.

The process has had a transformational socio-economic impact on the Burren, with 160 farmers sharing close to €3 million over the last three years. On average they received €7,500, and in some cases that is in addition to other funding from agri-environment programmes. The average cost of the programme is an incredibly modest €78 per hectare currently, covering 14,500 hectares of land. Importantly, the farmers co-fund the programme with an additional 25%. That means if we spend €75 of taxpayer money, the farmers match this with €25 on average. We do much farmer training and there are many social events, which is important in a place like the Burren which has less socialisation. There is a database of 80 local workers, meaning the impact is not just for farmers participating in the programme.

From an agricultural perspective, this is about good food production and minimising costs. We can show that there is better animal health and reduced costs from feeding, housing and contracting. The farmer is reducing costs all the time and increasing profits. There are also much better facilities for farmers, whether in opening access tracks, providing water facilities, etc., and these benefit the farmer. I hope Mr. Davoren will attest to that later.

It is an important process for water, which is a significant resource, and it protects much of the water supply, providing alternative sources of largely free water from rainwater and so on. There has been much investment in that regard. Fundamentally, the programme has had an important impact on landscape and heritage, with 56,500 metres of broken wall repaired. That has transformed the landscape, as one can see when driving through the Burren. Some 160 hectares of dense, scattered scrub have been removed, and a large number of new gates have been installed using an old gate design that has been relocated. A large number of monuments that had been encroached by scrub have also been protected. The landscape and heritage of the Burren has been shaping up over the past few years.

The programme delivers on biodiversity, and it is the first programme that can prove it. This has been done in a completely innovative way, with Dr. Parr developing a scoring system. One of the pictures in the presentation shows the good, bad and ugly. The first picture shows land that is very poorly grazed and managed. We assess each field in the programme, giving it a score out of ten depending on how well managed it is. From that score, we issue a payment to the farmer. It is like bringing an animal to the market, as the poorer the quality of the animal, the less the farmer will get. We have applied the same principle to the grasslands.

The middle picture shows land that is overstocked, leading to damage. We would give the farmer no bonus payment in that type of case. The last picture shows a farmer doing a great job, and if he or she scores ten out of ten, we may give him or her up to €120 per hectare. It is a simple incentive-based system that rewards good management. The beauty of the system is that we can say the farmer is the boss and knows best. We will indicate what we want and if the farmer produces it, we will pay the farmer accordingly.

That is important. It is important for us also to have a system of monitoring. I do not want to go into the details but this shows that compared with 2011, the condition of the habitats in the Burren in 2012 has improved significantly. The programme works. We have an in-built system of monitoring, the first of its kind in Ireland. We can prove that the programme works, which is important when we are trying to justify taxpayers' money.

There is an approval rating of approximately 90% from participating farmers, and there is a huge demand for this programme in the Burren. I would stress that farmers do not receive compensation under this programme. They earn every cent they get and they have had to co-fund as well. The quality of the delivery from this programme is a steal from the taxpayers' point of view; it is exceptionally good. We found that because we said to farmers that they should nominate what needs to be done, the work is done to an incredibly high standard. We were surprised to find that on many farms the farmer does more than he is paid for because the farmer knows what needs to be done, we fund them to do it, and he or she does it to such a high standard it is transformational. We have seen a very good quality of work.

We have hosted farmer study groups because this programme has generated a good deal of interest. In recent months farmers from Iveragh in south Kerry, the Aran Islands, Wicklow and Connemara have been to see us and we have shared as many of our stories as we can with those farmers as they embark on their journey. We have received multiple awards for the programme, including a nomination for a Council of Europe award, which would be a first for Ireland. This particular programme is held in very high esteem at a European level.

That is the story about the Burren. We have been working on it for 15 years and we are very proud of it. Our entire focus is on expanding this programme across the Burren but I cannot leave the committee without addressing the issue of the way this programme might apply elsewhere in Ireland because we are convinced that it can be done. We are not pushing it but we are offering it as a solution. There are scaling options. Members should think about their area. It could be Kildare, Wicklow, Kerry, Connemara, Donegal or anywhere in Ireland. All those places are important landscapes for nature and for people. All of them have been shaped by farming, and their future condition depends on continuation of the right type of farming. These places are important natural resources for producing food, tourism, biodiversity, recreation, heritage, water provision and carbon sequestration, but they all depend on the right type of farming.

The Irish State is legally obliged to protect these areas as well. The problem is that there is a very poor socio-economic outlook in many of these areas because of the age profile and the withdrawal of employment services in many of these areas. There are many natural and legal constraints to farming in these areas and, as a result, they are suffering from threats of intensification and marginalisation, neither of which are sustainable in the long run. This programme offers a realistic, proven solution to the way these places, their communities and their heritage might be sustained and enhanced. The vision, and it is realistic, is that we can sustain these rural communities by helping them become the conservers of their environment and paying them to do that.

The fact that we have tested this in the Burren is a good thing; it is not limited to the Burren. We have tested it in the most trying environment in Ireland. It is a complex place and it works very well but it is based on a simple set of principles which can be applied anywhere. I have listed them on the sheet given to members but they are simple, farmer-led and are paid on the basis of outputs. The more the farmer does, the more he or she gets from this programme, which is fair, and farmers respect that.

We are approaching a critical window in that submissions are being requested for the new rural development programme; the deadline is tomorrow. We are submitting on behalf of the Burren farming for conservation programme, BFCP, but also on behalf of the wider application of the BFCP because this is an important opportunity to get things right in many areas in rural Ireland. We believe this programme is a model tool for addressing high nature value farming in Ireland.

I thank members for listening. The final slides deal with our goals. In one shape or another the four of us have been working for 15 years on the BFCP. We are very proud of it and we want to ensure it is rolled out across the Burren under the next rural development programme. Our target area is approximately 30,000 hectares. We believe 600 or 700 farmers would be a realistic figure and an estimated annual cost of approximately €4.5 million. That is a rough cost.

Another goal of ours is the adoption of this simple but practical and effective model as a way to address the needs of high nature value farm land and farmers at a national level under the new programme. What motivates us are thriving, rural communities managing outstanding local environments. We can be world leaders in that regard. We have the model and the expertise and we would like to see it taken to the next level. I thank the members.