Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all members and witnesses. It has been a long session but there are many concrete and constructive proposals that have followed on from real, identifiable problems with this new concept. I wish to clarify a point for Mr. O'Donnell regarding land being made eligible over a period. There are portions of land currently deemed ineligible and I do not care what anybody says about heather being deemed eligible. We have parts of Wicklow uplands which are not grazable and which sheep will not go onto because of restrictive burning rules at the moment. It may be eligible but it is not in good agricultural or environmental condition.

If the objective of the plan is to bring it into good agricultural and environmental condition, all of the land should be declarable at the outset. If it is not achieved at the end of a five-year plan then one should pay the consequences for the portion that does not achieve. That is the objective and that is what I was talking about when I referred to it. There are mixed messages and I have put down parliamentary questions to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to make sure the two Departments were talking to each other at the earlier stage once GLAS was approved. Mr. Punch mentioned the delegated act with the 50%. I can see the logic behind having 50% of a parcel. I myself had a small portion of ground with a red circle around it that, because of wet summers, was not in a position to go in on top. It was deemed to be ineligible but I had land to compensate it.

To be honest, one could not be bothered because it was too much grief to go through the process.

There are many anomalies in the system and there is an inconsistent approach. Subjectivity, inconsistency and a lack of clear guidelines are the problems affecting this area. I expect that the committee members will decide to invite the Department's officials to a meeting as soon as possible with a view to getting their opinions on it. The officials will have had the benefit of seeing the transcript of today's proceedings. There are many questions and many direct problems have been identified which must be addressed. That will probably be the basis of our engagement with them, which we hope will happen sooner rather than later.

Again, I thank everybody for attending. I believe Deputy Kyne mentioned the Burren earlier. If ever there was an example of how a rule that was made to be applied across the board cannot be applied in every scenario, the Burren is one. A derogation had to be made from the rules as they were applied at the time. Mr. O'Donnell mentioned his position on the commonage framework plans. That is another example in which a statutory instrument is introduced to be applied across the board without taking cognisance of individual cases. When we produced a report on commonage management plans, which we published in July 2013, the first thing we said was that the only definition of a commonage that applies to all commonages is land that is farmed in common by two or more landowners. After that there is own commonage, rented commonage and commonage by right or collop. There are a variety of types of commonage, so that must be defined. No two types were the same. I believe you said the average was 500 hectares, but an individual farmer would not necessarily be obliged to stock it all. He or she would be obliged to stock their share of it at 0.15, rather than the entire commonage. Is that correct?