Mr. Thomas Cooney:

There have been 14,000 km of new hedgerows planted between the agri-environment options scheme, AEOS, and GLAS in the past ten years. Hedgerows have also been a protected feature, as part of CAP, since 2018. It is now against the law to remove a hedgerow unless one has an equal amount of hedgerow planted somewhere else on the farm. If one looks at the rest of Europe, we have a far higher percentage of hedgerows than most other European countries. There was talk about the Paris Basin earlier on. There are not too many hedgerows there.

There are a couple of measures in GLAS for maintenance of hedgerow. One is laying of hedgerows which rejuvenates a hedge that has been only grown up recently, in the past 20 years. It thickens it up. There is also a measure called "coppicing of hedgerow" where a hedgerow grows up into trees and there are large gaping holes in the bottom of it where livestock can walk. That is one of the measures where it is cut at approximately 6 in. high and it grows up into a nice thick hedge again.

I understand the Acting Chairman refers to where a hedgerow is trimmed every year. There would be a very small percentage of those around the country. It is predominately roadside hedges that are done like that and it is done on a road safety basis. That is the logic for doing them.