Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 16 December 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Hen Harrier Special Protection Areas

3:50 pm

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

I am probably the only person at the table who opposed actively entry into the European Union, which I always thought would come to a sticky end. However, we are where we are. Going back to 1997, we should read the small print. What was there in 1997, which Síle de Valera and I inherited when we came into the Department, was that a person would be compensated for any loss of income arising from a change from current practice. That always excluded and always will the inability to get a grant or a planning permission which was clear from the legislation passed in the very beginning, which the IFA knew. In other words, if a person was cutting turf at that time in a bog and was stopped, he or she had to be compensated. It was black and white because that was a current activity. On the other hand, if there was a loss of potential value into the future due to windmills or whatever needed planning permission, it was not compensable. I say this because it is not just a problem here, but is one in Europe. Much as I hate a lot of European law which is destroying the environment instead of helping it, I learned one hard lesson in all of this which is that one must study the book or one will get no answer. Prescription farming has done more damage than good to the wildlife it purports to protect.

If tomorrow those with responsibility for the OPW and natural heritage were totally on one's side and wanted to bring in a scheme and give one money, but had to do it legally, it would pose significant problems. I found that when I tried to do it. I remember when we destocked the hills the first time and wanted to pay farmers for the sheep we were taking down out of Exchequer funds, Síle de Valera and I went over to Europe. I will not bore the committee with the details, but the conversation was very interesting and basically boiled down to us being told we could not pay the farmers. I asked why not, given that it was our money, and I was told that we could not pay farmers as they were polluting the hills. In other words, overstocking was equivalent to polluting. Under the polluter-pays principle, one cannot compensate people for farming according to good practice. What I came around to when I was in government, if Deputy O'Donovan wishes to listen, was to say let us pretend that the hills are 20% overstocked on average and that therefore we will only compensate farmers for 80 of every 100 sheep we take away. I managed to persuade a good official in Teagasc, God rest his soul, to give me a good price for the sheep and 80% of the price he gave me was £3 more per euro - and it was punts at the time - than the IFA had sought in compensation. In that little slight of hand, I worked around the stupid and bizarre rules of the time. I could not go straight at it even though I was the Minister because of what they were telling me. We did not have permission to do it and it took six years to get permission for the scheme. We just went off and paid for six years without approval and eventually the permission came through on that formulation. The reality is that talking about potential value will lead one to hit the wall. One will not get compensation.

I happened to be travelling one day with a certain MEP from the north west who is still a member of the European Parliament. I said that something had to happen in Europe given the way designation and environmental policy was decimating our country. I said the MEP would have to go over, bang the table and get some change. I received a very short answer and was told to forget it as most countries liked it the way it was as most of their designated areas were well away from habitation. They do not have it our way. I was told we would not get any sympathy over there for that, which closed off that door. If one wanted to do it at this stage, the only legal approach would be to bring in a scheme and take certain actions. I would be very interested to hear if anyone has told the witnesses otherwise. We could not call it compensation but would price up the actions. Europe would insist on each action being priced. As long as those actions were carried out, we would agree to pay so much per hectare which we reckoned to be the economic cost of income foregone and the cost of carrying out the actions, including labour and time. A scheme could be brought in on that basis by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The second thing that would put Europe and the Government on the back foot would be to provide that if 15 or 20 years is required for hen harriers as the minimum timescale, a scheme should last for that period. It should be a National Parks and Wildlife Service scheme, should not have rules on commonages and should allow everybody in. If they are serious about the hen harrier, everybody should be in the gig and there is no point in not having it.

Unless the IFDL bends what it is looking for - and I know what that is - it will not get it in its current form. If it bends what it is looking for in accordance with the realities of the law and in a way that could be done by a sympathetic Minister, it might get damn near in cash terms what it wants. We should be honest and acknowledge that a rose by any other name is still a rose. Money is still money no matter how it is given. There is a need for everyone to move into a space as to what is legally possible. Some of the things I have been asked about do not seem legally possible.

Finally, my dream is that we take a leaf out of David Cameron's book and renegotiate certain terms of our membership of the European Union, in which case, this issue should be on the agenda.

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