Mr. Reamonn Fealy:

I thank everybody for their questions. There is a comprehensive list for us to deal with. I agree with Senator O'Keeffe that we would want to be here for some time to adequately address them all but we will do our best.

On the notion of incentivisation, Deputy Pringle's question referred to the effectiveness of incentivisation in terms of soft incentivisation versus hard incentivisation. Most of the work in that area is conducted by my colleagues in the socio-economic area of Teagasc where the effects of different types of incentivisation are rolled out. However, as a general principle, we view the construction of a framework that avoids red-lining - another question we got a short time ago was on restricting areas of land for particular types of activity - as a particular path that should be avoided.

Traditionally, the way we have implemented changes and moves towards best practice was through the incentivisation model. Ultimately, if we are to expect our farm stakeholders to be the arbiters and those responsible for maintaining our land to the best possible quality in a manner that will lead to the best economic outputs and the best agricultural production outputs while maintaining environmental quality, we must have cognisance of the fact that it is a public good and a service to the public good, and incentives must be designed to meet that end. That is what is engendering the approach we are now examining with regard to a framework for moving into the future. A framework needs to be built that takes account of the multiple outcomes of agricultural land use in Ireland, be they for environmental quality or for agricultural productivity. To date, incentives have been designed with a singular outcome in mind and while the incentive is designed in such a manner that would bring one to that end, it has created what are termed perverse outcomes in that there have been negative impacts that might not have been considered previously.

Two examples come to mind. Traditionally, perhaps our management around upland areas and sheep has been shown in retrospect to be misguided, and the issue around overstocking has created some problems, particularly in the western areas. Also, in retrospect the expansion of forestry onto deep peatland soils with a singular species was not the most productive and useful way to go in forestry, but we are learning. As research, time and resources are put into these problems we are learning that there are better ways to approach the way we incentivise land management.

One or two questions were asked about soils. Soils and soil mapping is a particular area for spatial analysis in Teagasc. If I understand his question correctly, Deputy Penrose asked how we take account of the finer detail of soil variability in Ireland in a national mapping. It is a good question and one I have had to deal with for nigh on 16 years in my career in Teagasc. It is a challenging task. Depending on the classification system we use there are ten or 11 major soil groups in Ireland, and nine of them have been recorded as occurring in one field in Cork. Without referring to Cork, that suggests how difficult the task is of mapping our soils.

In terms of the way we approach this problem, with the production of the 1:250,000 map, we show soils in their generality and we show soils with the proportions that occur in a particular region. These are called soil associations. That is the classic industry standard, so to speak, in terms of the way soil mapping should be approached. We would always add a caveat when people are using the data that soil maps are not to be used for sight-specific purposes. For any reason, be it for the positive side of farm productivity or a farmer making an assessment within field or regulatory efforts, a national soil map should not be used at point or field scale.

Senator O'Keeffe asked if we are ahead or behind the curve. Interestingly, when I started in Teagasc we had drifted behind. We are now coming towards the front, particularly in light of the near completion of phase 1 of the Irish Soil Information System, ISIS, project. This is an opportune time to answer this question because we are at the end of phase 1 and it is due to be presented towards the beginning of March. For the first time we will have a comprehensive database containing all our soils information that has been developed over many years, since the mid-1950s, which will be available to the public via a web browser interface.

In this regard we have European colleagues and peers on our steering committee, and colleagues of mine have been invited to present to European organisations on the way we have developed that system. We are using leading-edge technology to both store and disseminate the information, and at this stage we are coming back into a position where we are beginning to lead the curve.