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

I thank the ICSFA and the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association. Sílim gurb í seo í an chéad uair a bhí siad os comhair an choiste seo. Tá cur i láthair iontach déanta acu. Is ceist thar a bheith teicniúil í agus ní dóigh liom go bhfuil mórán tuisceana acusan nach bhfuil taithí acu ar na cnoic uirthi.

I welcome these two submissions which, in certain ways, are complementary. At the end of the ICSFA submission there was a reference to delegated regulation and there is flexibility there if the Government chose to use it.

The submission by the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association has gone in great detail into the practical problems we face as to what is grazing of a hill. Looking at the way hills of, say, 500 ha are farmed in Ireland, we do not shepherd sheep in the way they would in continental countries. There is not somebody out there all day moving them up and down the hill. We tend to allow the sheep use the higher parts of the hill in a totally natural way and let them find the food. They spread out over the hill and in different weathers and conditions, they go up and come down, as they do at different times of the day and night. Despite the fact that this is the way it is done and, therefore, the animals themselves are grazing in an uneven way, large areas of some mountains are being declared ineligible even though there is full accessibility to the stock. It is being said that there is not enough activity on that part of the mountain, even though the stock themselves decided for some reason that they will not graze that particular part of the hill as intensively as the rest. Animals do these things. That seems to be a major challenge.

This was an issue I raised right at the very beginning of the commonage framework plans, namely, taking stock off in the wintertime. One of the problems was that it changed the grazing pattern of the animals.

We had what I refer to as the "cat at the back door" syndrome. Cats do not roam in the way they used to because they know that if they come to the back door they will be fed. Sheep that should be feeding on the lowland think they know where to go for food and do not range around the hills in the same way as they did before. Taking cattle off the hills has to affect their behaviour. While I accept that this is a problem in other areas also, it is a massive hill area problem. The farmers in these hill areas are being affected by behaviour forced on them by Departments.

Mr. Joyce referred to blanket bog grass known as Molinia, or purple moor grass, and the fact that it dies away in the wintertime. The late Michael O’Toole said that one of the greatest controls for overstocking of mountains was to leave stock out all year round, because the grass dies back in the winter and if farmers left too many stock out they would die. There would be very high mortality rates. Taking them off when the Molinia had died back and putting them on only in summer could lead to overgrazing of hills. I know that some of the witnesses have direct experience of hill farming. How correct was he? He was quite an expert on this. To what extent have these changes led to overgrazed and undergrazed parts on the same mountain with sheep free ranging on the mountain?

I fully support the suggestion that we need a working group to work on this. Until all of this is clarified, do the witnesses believe that the reference areas given by the Department should stand until agreed otherwise and not be subject to any penalty? Do they believe that where sheep have free range over a hill, the whole hill, as long as there is not clear undergrazing of the whole hill, should be deemed eligible? How long do they think it would take for a working group to come to conclusions about how it might be tackled and to apply this to all the hills? Would it take six months, a year or several years? Should we allow farmers, if it is deemed that there is not enough activity on parts of the hill, sufficient time to bring that hill back to whatever state the Department wants it to be in? Should the stocking level laid down for the areas of the natural constraint scheme and the disadvantaged areas scheme be considered sufficient farming activity? No other type of farmer has to account for how much livestock he or she puts into any one field at any time of the year, and it would seem unfair that hill farmers have to do that.