Dr. Andy Bleasdale:

The issues facing and affecting commonages are horridly complex. The understanding of it in this meeting elaborates on that complexity. We could spend a day or a week or a month adding to the complexities, so my answers to the questions raised will be very brief. I cannot elaborate because each issue would require further and further elaboration.

Deputy Ó Cuív did not understand why we are focusing on commonages per se and not the full extent of the upland resource. I fully accept that many of the privately owned upland areas have been either under- or overgrazed as well, but the problems in commonages are exacerbated by the fact that there are multiple owners of those commonages. Therefore, it is a further complexity. If one is dealing with one landowner one can at least have a dialogue with one person. When one is dealing with a multiplicity of people, some of whom do not wish to speak to one, the problem becomes more entrenched and difficult to resolve. I fully accept the Deputy's point that, driving along the road and looking in over the fence, one would not know whether an area is commonage and whether it is under- or overgrazed. One could not assume that because it is overgrazed it is commonage.

In respect of adjacent LPIS plots, there is and should be flexibility in the approach. We should not deal with LPIS plots as individual items that do not interact with each other. If it makes sense for groups or clusters of LPIS plots that are adjacent and through which sheep roam to be dealt with as a unit, that is entirely logical. For those LPIS areas, the collective farmers should come together as a group to discuss the group management of that area. We are not talking about plans or agreements or collective management regimes for each of the LPIS plots we have mentioned. There could be a much smaller subset that would cover the extent of commonages about which we are concerned.

I agree that off-wintering is a very unhealthy solution and is not generally traditional in the upland areas. We did it because in the areas where it was being proposed the land was in such poor condition that it needed a break, and the best time to do that was over the winter. That probably creates a whole suite of other problems as the sheep must be reintroduced to the hill and they do not range as much as they did formerly.

One could quote chapter and verse the pros and cons of either approach. We introduced it only in two areas, which were very bad, with 70% or 80% overgrazing. There was no potential for sheep to graze anything. It was a question of taking the sheep off the land, housing them for the winter and paying the farmers. I accept it is not a sustainable solution, and we would not generally propose such action through this process.

Cattle can be introduced to the debate. I know there is a tendency to exclude cows from upland grazing, which, in hindsight, is possibly a mistake. There were a suite of reasons for that, one of which was the rural environment protection scheme, which led to the need for housing for cattle or the fencing of water courses through the commonage framework plans, the need to off-winter cattle and no housing for the stock. The net effect was that farmers saw it as easier to stop farming cattle. Sheep and cattle are the ideal and we should try to deliver that. The difficulty will be in trying to reintroduce cattle to areas where farmers have opted out, but perhaps there could be incentives through the agri-environment scheme. Perhaps a hardy breed of cattle could be put on a hill and that would bring added value from a biodiversity perspective.

The comments regarding the logistics of robbing Peter to pay Paul with the collective agreement are insightful. It is like taking 20 sheep from farmer A and giving them to farmer B to get the same answer overall. This assumes that the farmer who does not want to put sheep on the commonage can be supported through this process, and I am not entirely clear that this will be possible, even if we accept it as an ideal. At some point, will the farmers who choose for whatever reason not to graze sheep or cattle on a commonage continue to get paid on those lands, either under Pillar 1 or Pillar 2? I would like to think that if they are deemed to be party to the management of that commonage - even if sheep are not brought to the hill - there would be imparting of knowledge to younger farmers, which is part of the farming regime. The European-level instrument may not be flexible enough to allow it, but I see merit in the approach.

I like the high nature value, HNV, farming approach and we must think outside the box in that regard. We must use all the funding opportunities available to us, including those from Article 8, thematic sub-programmes, co-operative agreements and advisory services funded through a programme, with a local presence similar to the one we have in the Burren. That has been very effective. We must be less accepting of the potential for future agri-environment schemes and challenge ourselves to formulate what is required to meet Irish needs, including commonage, privately owned special areas of conservation and special protection areas. We must also include the broader, non-designated landscape that is of high value in Ireland, or high nature value farmland.

There is an issue of selective burning. As long as we try to resolve the issue of burning on a national scale without going into individual areas, there will never be a solution. The issue hinges on the Wildlife Act and the curtailment period through which a person cannot burn. There is an appetite to consider the issue and perhaps amend the Act in due course if it is deemed scientifically sustainable. That must be on the basis of a need on the ground, and it is better to burn in a planned and controlled way rather than an uncontrolled fashion in the closed period. A forest fire over thousands of hectares is ultimately more damaging than allowing planned burning. This must be part of the dialogue and there cannot be an ad hoc solution that is not thought out at a local level. I hate high-level debates on such issues because they do not really bring any value for locals. We should operate at a local level and inform national policy, allowing it to react to local action.

I appreciate fully the issues relating to the Curragh. One would like to think the debate we are currently having does not solely focus on farmers. In the first iteration of the debate there must be consideration of farming as the primary driver, but there are a suite of other drivers. There are competing demands in the Curragh, as has been noted, as it is an amenity area, with horse riding, farming, Government and Department of Defence land. It is a more complex issue than just farming alone. We must have recourse to some sort of other management planning process that takes farming as part of the solution. We must not penalise farmers if the solution is not delivered by horse riders or the Army, for example; they are often a cheap target and farmers must not be marginalised when they are not responsible for the management of lands.

There was language in my presentation regarding self-regulation, and perhaps that is a bridge too far. Farmers must self-determine and be the authors of their own destiny. They should be party to the solution, although that does not mean they must necessarily regulate themselves; Departments must play a part. If the system falls apart and there are penalties, sanctions and other factors, it should be a last resort. The farmers in the first instance must go back to the notion of collective responsibility. If a bully in a commonage attempts to ride roughshod over neighbours, there must be some local and national recourse in taking such a person to task. We cannot continue to accept a diminishing individual right to single farm payments and agri-environment schemes by ignoring all common sense and not wishing to be a local participant in the conversation.

In the first instance there should be self-determination, and people on the ground should demand it as something they require. After that, Departments will follow with any supports they can give to 90% of the shareholders working together on the ground. We cannot legislate for everybody's response but if there is a collective agreement for at least 90% of the people on the ground, it is the first step in a process.