Mr. John Martin:

I thank the Deputies for their positive comments also. The agrifood industry is obviously very important to the North also. It employs more than 100,000 people, a sizeable number given a population of 1.7 million. It is our largest employing industry and contributes approximately 6% to 7% of our GDP. As such, its significance to the North is similar to its significance to the South. I agree with what was said about the provenance of food, which is important, but I set out a challenge in that regard. While there is a perception that food which comes from Ireland North and South is clean and green, if one scratches the surface in certain areas, there is a definite impact agriculture and agrifood have on the environment. A group of environmental NGOs and organisations from across the United ingdom have produced a report entitled "State of Nature 2016", which highlights the fact that the intensification of agriculture, driven through unsustainable agricultural policies, is one of the things that is causing major biodiversity decline, impacting water quality and contributing to climate change. However, it also said that the targeted use of agricultural subsidies through things like the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, can be one of the major solutions to some of these challenges.

As Northern Ireland and Britain plan to leave the European Union, as a group of environmental NGOs we will push for a sustainable land-use policy to replace the CAP. We have long been critical of the CAP, although we realise it plays a significant role in providing income for farmers. Obviously the 87% figure from 2013 to 2014 is key; however, we believe taxpayers are not getting the best bang for their buck with the Common Agricultural Policy. We fully believe that if we change the nuance of that policy to one that delivers public money for public goods, it can deliver for the agrifood industry, the environment and society as a whole.

The CAP was recently consulted on and there was a check on the CAP in a similar way to the check on the EU nature directives. The nature directives REFIT process found that while these directives, encompassing special protection areas, SPAs, special areas of conservation, SACs, and those things that protect our most precious landscapes constituted really important legislation and were doing the job, more could be done in terms of how they are implemented in certain places. Similarly, regarding the CAP, a recent living land campaign received 250,000 responses from citizens across Europe to the effect that they wanted the CAP to do more for the environment. There is a shift in European thinking towards the CAP doing more for the environment. From a national point of view in the United Kingdom, there is an opportunity for us to reframe that subsidy as something which delivers public money for public goods and which is good for farmers and the agrifood industry. However we must all work together to try to get to a place where we feel that it will do so. At the minute, we believe the environment and agriculture are being treated as two separate policy areas whereas there is definite opportunity for those areas to weave together and to provide something that can deliver for both.

Mr. Kelly will now speak about constitutional issues.