Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Smyth and Mr. Grogan for their presentations. On the positive side it is encouraging to see some form of booklet going to farmers, to their advisers and to the people who work with them. They will at least give some indication of what is expected, though there will also be a lot of confusion. For example, in the photographs of an area which has tall rushes and is not accessible to animals a man is standing up to his waist in rushes while the one behind is eligible because the rushes are not so tall, but who determines the height? Does it depend on the eye of the inspector and is it at the inspector's discretion? It is going to cause a lot of confusion to the farmer and his advisers.

The Department also said it would be putting in place training sessions on land eligibility for agricultural advisers and consultants. That is welcome but the Department needs to know exactly what it wants to advise people. As with most other members, I have been dealing with land eligibility for a number of years and I have seen people being penalised on the basis of determinations made by an inspector using the naked eye. In such cases another inspector might have made a different determination.

Deputy Ó Cuív mentioned the issue of burning. In my own county there has been a significant increase in burnings in the past number of weeks. This made the national headlines but a lot of the burnings were started by other people and not by the farmers themselves. There is controlled burning and uncontrolled burning, the former done with consultation and within an authoritative framework, the latter not. Are we going to penalise people who are the victims of uncontrolled burning? How will that affect their entitlements?

Retrospective penalties regarding payments has been a major issue for all of us in recent months. There are people who firmly and sincerely believed they were compliant because of the previous mapping arrangements, and they then found themselves not to be compliant. They have had large penalties imposed on them. Such people are those living on the most marginal land who are most dependent on those entitlements for their family farms to survive.

Deputy Ó Cuív asked about it occurring as a consequences of the re-examination. If the Department is satisfied that a farm is compliant with the booklet framework it will issue, what happens to retrospective payments for people who have been penalised? Will they be recouped? There is only one way out of all this and that is to have an amnesty for people who have been penalised.