Mr. Colm Hayes:

I thank the committee for the invitation to address it on the hen harrier programme which the Department introduced at the end of last year. This is a new, locally-led project jointly funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the EU under the European Innovation Partnership initiative, which I will explain in more detail later.

The hen harrier is a subject well known to all present. It nests on the ground, and its preferred nesting sites are unimproved and unenclosed open moorland and heath or bog habitats. It also nests in young pre-thicket forestry plantations. In Ireland, its population is estimated to be in the region of 108 to 157 pairs but that, unfortunately, is declining. The species is listed in annex 1 of the birds directive, which means the birds are subject to special conservation measures that, among other things, require member states to designate special protection areas for their conservation. In Ireland, these areas are the Slieve Bloom mountains in counties Laois and Offaly; the Stacks to Mullaghareirk mountains, the west Limerick hills and Mount Eagle in counties Cork, Kerry and Limerick; the Boggerahs or Mullaghanish and Musheramore mountains in County Cork; Slievefelim to the Silvermines in counties Limerick and Tipperary; Slieve Beagh in County Monaghan; and the Slieve Aughty mountains in counties Clare and Galway.

As has been said, some 4,000 landowners have lands that are designated for the protection of the hen harrier, covering an area of 169,000 ha, although only some 57,000 ha of that is agricultural land. It is important to note with reference to the earlier discussion that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has no role in the designation of land as areas of conservation or protection, which is entirely a matter for the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, and its parent Department. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is not a party to any bilateral agreement previously entered into between the NPWS and farmers in designated lands. That agreement was referenced but we are not a party to it.

Most of the rest of the designated land is forestry and while the hen harrier can use pre-thicket forests for breeding and foraging, once the canopy closes the forest is of little use and breaks up valuable open habitat. Some 53% of the six SPAs are under forest cover, with significant areas now closed canopy. As part of our current rural development plan, RDP, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine seeks to address a wide range of environmental objectives, involving farmers in different ways and paying for additional actions undertaken and income forgone. The committee will be familiar with most of these, notably GLAS, the organic farming scheme, the Burren programme and, more recently, the locally-led measures. GLAS is the main mechanism for addressing these challenges and conservation of the hen harrier is a priority action under that scheme. Farmers with hen harrier habitat qualified automatically for GLAS under tier 1, with some of the highest per hectare payments as well, at €370 per hectare up to the standard ceiling of €5,000 per annum, with automatic qualification for GLAS Plus as well, should they manage sufficient habitat. GLAS Plus brings potential payment for managing hen harrier habitat up to €7,000 a year.

In the context of the hen harrier, GLAS is all about protecting or creating the right habitat conditions. The main way farmers do that is by managing grassland in a particular way, incorporating the right balance of heather, scrub and rushes and reducing fertiliser inputs. It is not about turning one's back on the land but is about active farming and that is what we pay farmers to do under GLAS, which is important in the context of the earlier discussion on the abandonment of land. The GLAS measure was designed in close co-operation with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, with environmental NGOs like BirdWatch Ireland and with farmer representatives. It has proved hugely successful as regards farmer participation. There are currently 2,674 farmers in GLAS taking the hen harrier action, and this represents nearly 70% of all farmers with hen harrier land. By any standards, this is a remarkable achievement and the scale of this level of co-ordinated intervention could have a real impact on the survival of the bird.

However, in developing the current RDP, the Department wanted to build in the possibility for testing different ways of approaching agri-environmental issues on the ground, including how we might try to help the hen harrier. We wanted to experiment with a more agile model that could be used to test new ways of doing things and, perhaps most important, new ways of engaging farmers and involving them much more directly in developing ideas and solutions. We also wanted to explore the potential of more result-based schemes, where farmers are paid for the result rather than the action; the better the result, the higher the payment. This is an important initiative because we expect future iterations of the EU rural development programme will include a much greater focus on results-based schemes and we envisage learning a lot from these schemes so as to influence the shape of future schemes. Hand in hand with all of this comes greater freedom to farm. In thinking about this, we were obviously influenced strongly by the success of the various Burren schemes over the years, which have also been funded by the Department.

The proposal we put to the EU was the locally-led model. This foresaw a bottom-up response to environmental challenge, involving farmers directly in the process, with flexible schemes and incorporating a results-based approach. This fitted well with the Commission’s own plans for European innovation partnerships, EIPs, which saw a range of actors working together, namely, farmers, NGOs, scientists etc. testing new and innovative approaches to a range of challenges, not just environmental ones.

In developing its proposals, the Department was also very conscious of the report and recommendations which issued from this committee in October 2015. While that report focused largely on the wider question of designation and compensation, in which we have no role, we noted the conclusion of the committee that farmers provide a public good when they work to preserve the hen harrier and that they should be paid for that. We also noted the committee’s concern that farmers be involved directly in the design of any conservation measures, and in particular the ninth recommendation of that report that farmers and farming groups be more involved in the entire process of protecting the hen harrier.

I should have said at the outset that I am joined today by Mr. Fergal Monaghan, project manager of the hen harrier scheme, and Mr. Ronan O'Flaherty, who is head of division in the Department with responsibility for European innovation partnerships.

I am sure Mr. Monaghan can outline his engagement and interaction with farmers and farm organisations in the design of this programme, if members wish.

This is the process out of which the new hen harrier programme has grown. It is a locally-led project, active in all six SPAs. While funded and supported by the Department, it is not a Department scheme as such but a partnership involving many different players. As well as seeking to protect the future of the bird, it explicitly seeks to create a stronger socio-economic outlook for the agricultural communities in those areas and to promote positive relations with those communities, who have managed these sensitive landscapes for many generations.

The new hen harrier programme has been designed by a locally-led project team, headed by Mr. Fergal Monaghan, working in close collaboration with the farmers on the ground in those areas. A total of 31 separate meetings were held during the design process across the six SPAs, with more than 500 farmers attending. The project team also consulted with the IFA, IFDL, the ICMSA, INHFA and the ICSA during the design stage. The first four organisations listed also nominated farms to be included in the development process, supplemented by additional farms identified by the project team.

Three types of payment are included under the new programme. These are a results-based payment, a supporting actions payment and a hen harrier payment. None is an area-based payment and that is one of the innovations. The first is a points-based system in which a farmer gets paid based on the quality of habitat and can work to increase that quality and his or her payment every year. The supporting actions payment is to pay for capital works that will improve both the habitat and the farm. The final one, the hen harrier payment, is not something we have tried previously but effectively is a bonus payment to farmers if a successful breeding roost site or nest site is identified on or near their land or where the outlook for an entire SPA stabilises or improves. Worked examples show that a farmer with 15 ha could earn between €3,000 and €4,000 a year, while a farmer with 40 ha could actually get up to €6,000 or €7,000 a year. This does not include what a farmer may gain under the GLAS scheme, which could amount to an additional €7,000 per year in GLAS Plus cases. Additional supports for farmers in designated areas are provided for in the rural development programme and departmental schemes. They include the areas of natural constraints scheme, with an annual budget of €200 million.

The new programme was launched by the Minister, Deputy Creed, on 8 December and since then the project team has held seven separate information meetings, with a further three meetings scheduled over the next two weeks. These meetings have been very well attended, with more than 100 farmers at some of them. Actual applications are well in excess of what we would have expected at this point, which always is the measure we use to determine the impact and success of a scheme. Little over a month since the programme was launched, we have almost 1,000 validated applications on hand and a further 127 are being processed. New applications are arriving on a daily basis.

We have many other European innovation partnerships, EIPs, in the pipeline now, the vast majority recruited through open calls, and their imagination and innovation will add enormously to our own learning process and will inform the shape of the next RDP from 2020 onwards. However, the hen harrier programme is by far the biggest single project we have under this heading, with by far the largest budget at €25 million.

We will take any questions committee members may have.