Mr. Pat Dunne:

The hill farmers I represent certainly are in a bind at present and do not know where they are going with regard to eligible land. The people from the ACA also do not appear to know what are the rules, any more than the IFA or anybody else does. This year, 2015, will be the year in which people must decide. As for inspectors on the ground, one hears all sorts of anecdotal evidence that what some fellows will pass others will not, and farmers do not know where they are going in this regard. It must be realised that the payments coming to farmers represent 100% of their income, and in most cases they cannot even hold on to those payments, or a large percentage of them, which will be gone simply on maintaining the stock on the hills. For this reason, farmers do not know where they are going or what they will do. They are approaching me all the time to ask me what they should be putting in or what they should be taking out. However, as neither I nor the advisers can tell them what to do, we are in a hell of a position in this regard. We should be trying to come up with a system that encourages farmers to be using and stocking the hills, rather than running the farmers away from them and causing land abandonment. It is very difficult to expect younger farmers to buy into regimes such as the one in place at present because they will look at it and will ask why they should get into that. In the case of my own young lads, they ask me why am I doing it. Younger farmers will ask why should they not get a job somewhere at which they would get a week's wages at the end of the week without any of this hassle. This is the sort of thing we are up against.

We must home in on the issue of land eligibility. Proper, clear guidelines should be handed down to ensure that one inspector cannot declare the heather is too tall or there are too many rushes or ferns while another lad states it is all right by him, as one then is in a position where one lad does not know what the other is doing. Inspections have been carried out in the recent past - the Chairman is aware of some of them - and people have had a penalty of 100% imposed on them. That means the total loss of their income, as simple as that. On what are such people to survive and where are they to go? That is the simple reality. The matter must be clarified. It is at the 11th hour now and it must be clarified and finalised. People must know exactly where they are going and what precisely they should put down on their application forms.