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

I apologise for my late arrival. I was travelling by a mode of transport whose schedule I could not change. Today is a very important day. Deputy Kyne and I share the same constituents and face the same problems. What Deputy Kyne said is correct. Having given with one hand, the Department takes with the other. From the outset, there was very strong resistance to any equalisation of the payments upwards despite the fact that we know that lower paid farmers would on average have got more and those on very high payments would have got less if the payments were based on stocking density. We have those figures from the Department.

I welcome the fact that all the farming organisations now seem to want clarity on this issue. I must say that the issue of regionalisation is a red herring. There is regionalisation in the UK for obvious reasons because it is more than one country. It is a member of the EU but it consists of England, Wales, Scotland and a part of this country, which is Northern Ireland. Obviously, regionalisation in that context is very different because they would want different regimes with different elements. As one country, I do not think regionalisation was ever supported by anybody and I think we can knock that off the agenda.

Two years ago, the Department carried out a detailed analysis of everybody's maps and eliminated all ineligible features. Witnesses may remember the roads, rocks and everything the Department thought was ineligible such as bits of heather. Would the ACA and the IFA support the principle that if a farmer puts down the reference area he has been told by the Department is the reference area - including commonages - having examined the maps, they should not be subject to any penalty if on a subsequent ground inspection, the Department decides some of the land was ineligible? One of the big dangers of this is not only the unfairness of suddenly taking all sorts of land out of hill areas but also the fact that one never knows when the axe will fall. It could be four or five years before the Department gets around to walking any particular commonage or anyone's particular piece of land. It could then impose retrospective penalties, as it did previously, on somebody who had acted in good faith. Do the ACA and the IFA believe that if a person puts down the reference area for their land, as determined by the Department, if the Department subsequently finds out they have less land it deems eligible having walked it, they should not be subject to any penalty? Otherwise, the farmer is in a guessing game. I wonder whether that is what this is all about - getting into a guessing game as to whether this bit of heather is in or out or too high or too low.

Are there too many rushes on this piece of land or do these ferns die back enough in the winter months to allow the land to be grazed? Like one of the issues raised at Maam Cross, is there full cover in such a way that it cannot be grazed? Farmers should not be penalised in a guessing game with the Department. Certainty is the first thing a farmer needs. The simplest way to ensure this is to request the farmer to include the reference area determined by the Department. Accordingly, he or she would not be subject to any penalty if the Department subsequently found it had made a mistake.

A clear definition is needed from the Department of what it considers to be minimum farming activity. All of the farmers involved in the cases in question are receiving the disadvantaged areas payment and would, therefore, have to comply with minimum stocking density rules. It is time the Department put its cards on the table and stated what the definition was. Should it sit down with all interested parties, including the committee and farming organisations, to spell out exactly what is going on?

The issue of the designation of land for the protection of the hen harrier is causing significant grief across the country. Many farmers with designated lands will say GLAS, the green, low-carbon, agri-environment scheme, is small compensation for this. Do the delegations believe an alternative scheme should be provided for by the National Parks and Wildlife Service? As the hen harrier will not come back in five or seven years, a long-term project is required to get its population levels thriving again. Should such an alternative scheme run for up to 20 years such as a forestry grants scheme?

I note what is eligible for GLAS and the basic payment scheme, BPS, is different this year. Do the delegations believe there should be one common definition in that what is eligible for GLAS should automatically eligible be for the BPS and vice versa? Otherwise, I see queries about and delays in payments because of different hectareages in the two applications.