Mr. Trevor Donnellan:

I agree entirely with the Deputy's point that we need to look at this from a holistic environmental perspective.

The worst thing we could do is plant a load of trees under an afforestation plan but discover in subsequent years, for example, that we had done nothing on biodiversity. The concern I have - again this reflects the remit of this committee - is that the pressure is most acute in respect of greenhouse gas emissions but we know we have other objectives to which we want agriculture to be able to contribute and deliver. Having a more holistic view of what agriculture should be delivering for Ireland from an environmental perspective is critically important in the context of assessing what it can do in respect of greenhouse gas emissions.

We are in a difficult place at present in regard to intensive agricultural activity. I do not think we have significantly intensive agriculture in this country, certainly nothing by comparison with what would be found in the US. We have aspects of agriculture which are more intensive and more focused on delivering profit from the marketplace and agriculture which is more focused on the delivery of environmental goods. We are telling both groups of farmers that they are doing one thing correctly and the other thing wrong. We are telling farmers who are not making very much money but are farming at low intensity that they need to intensify their production and become more profitable and similarly we are telling farmers who are quite profitable that they are not doing enough in terms of consideration for the environment. Perhaps we should consider that both groups are delivering on two different objectives, both of which are important from the perspective of Irish agriculture. If that is something that policymakers decide is important, then perhaps it should be reflected in a policy that evolves in the future. Beating everybody over the head and telling them that they are doing something wrong and telling others they are also doing it wrong, that one farmer needs to be more like the other person in one respect and his counterpart needs to be more like the other farmer in a different respect, could be counterproductive. I do not know if we can deliver a situation where every single farm is delivering on the objective of producing a significant level of income from the marketplace and simultaneously doing 100% of what it could from the environmental perspective.