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

I wish to make a supplementary point. We have not seen GLAS, but the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, was task driven. Is Dr. Ó hUallacháin saying that a high-conservation status area requires the right level of farming to be maintained, that being, what was done traditionally and no more or less? In places like the Burren, farming went from one extreme to the other, for example, over-intensification on the hills in the west and under-intensification to the point that everyone was concerned about land abandonment, etc. Prior to the incentives, though, generations of farmers farmed that land in a sustainable way because they knew what they were about.

Has Teagasc suggested that GLAS should focus on the output instead of the task? Judging by the little information we have on GLAS, it seems to be task driven, in that one must maintain X number of walls and so on. It could instead be concerned with telling farmers with high-status farms to maintain them in very good environmental order and that, if this meant doing nothing more than farming land sensibly, they would then get money.