Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have two questions for the IFA. One is about GLAS. Mr. Healy mentioned it in his presentation. There are 50,000 farmers involved in it. Mr. Healy said the scheme should be reopened. There are two parts to my question. From an IFA point of view, does it have a significant positive environmental impact? Would it be possible to bring another 50,000 of the 130,000 farmers in the State into it?

I have a question on hedgerows, which are a bugbear of mine. I heard what the IFA and farming organisations have said. They put forward a very strong and coherent argument on the production of beef and milk. It is the most sustainable in Europe. There are some things that could be done a little bit better on farms to try to improve things such as the sequestering value of farms. One thing is hedgerows. There is a programme of reinstatement. One has to reinstate what one takes out. We all know that when one takes out a hedgerow, it is not something that can be recreated in one, two, three or four years. I am especially concerned about the practice of cutting them down to about a foot high. Why can we not go back to the practice of what used to be referred to as breasting ditches, in other words, cutting the outsides? I asked one of the IFA's members about this recently. The person will remain nameless. I asked him why people were doing it. I was curious about it. I noticed a lot of it happening around Ballymena and places like that. He said it was a Protestant thing. He will remain nameless. I am curious about it. For the life of me, I cannot understand it. Apart from being able to see someone's farm or show off how tidy and neat my farm is, I fail to see, as a rural Deputy, the benefits of cutting them down to one or two feet high. I will keep the name of the IFA member secret.