Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State gave a great speech about how people are genuine in the majority and that they will do the right thing anyway. I believe that is true. I have also come to the conclusion over the years in my role as a manager that if I had a good employee, no rules were needed. I also found that if I had an employee who was not performing I could write a book of rules to fill this room but that never worked. We think that by imposing more conditions we will solve the problems of the world and eliminate the rogue. However, for most of the time we are causing grief to genuine people. There are pages of conditions in these documents and like the insurance policy, most people never read the conditions until there is a problem and then they realise these conditions exist. This is the case with the rural areas of conservation regulations. One day they tell us that these bits of scrub are great high-nature areas and the next day they tell us we will be fined for calling it a forage area.

I ask that the word "conditions" be qualified, that there has to be some qualification in the law that they must be proportionate. I am not being prescriptive but I think there has to be a clear direction to all people who might start writing those conditions that they have to be proportionate. I cannot for any good reason understand why that would not be written in as a clear direction to all future people who are thinking of putting in conditions that there has to be a sense of proportionality. I ask the Minister of State to consider this amendment.