Mr. Paud Evans:

I would love to come up if I had the time. In any event we are as fully aware of the situation in County Donegal as we are in other parts of the country.

On the possibility of making commonage a region - in reality the implementation of the new CAP reform will be very complex because of the elements on convergence, flat-rate payments and the requirements for land measurement to participate in greening. The implementation will be difficult for the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine and for farmers as well. I am not sure that making commonage lands a separate region would be the answer to the problems of the farmers that are dealing with it.

I will now respond to Senator Ó Domhnaill's question on data. Dr. Andy Bleasdale and Mr. Kevin Smyth outlined the background to the data on the minimum and maximum. The initial push for this came from farmers with commonages who were hindered by the destocking plans and wanted to expand. The Department launched AEOS 3 in the autumn of 2012 and under it there was a requirement for farmers with commonage lands to submit details of the stock they intended to put on the commonage lands. These were the drivers at the time. It has now been made clear that this will not be implemented until we fully consult with all parties involved. The urgency of this issue relates to the European Commission rather than any internal driver. In my view it is important to put the bones of a long-term plan in place, which must be for a long duration to work, but it can be tweaked as we go along. The first steps of the plan is the consultation process. Unless there is a comprehensive and complete process that involves everybody in the consultation process, in my view the plan will not work. The urgency is to get the consultation process under way and eventually to start putting the bones of a plan in place.