Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise an interesting side note which has nothing to do with bees. I was to Inishbofin last weekend. There has been a significant revival in the corncrake population on the islands off the west coast. Part of what caused their demise was the lack of farming when the islands became depopulated, as well as changes in farming practices. Strangely, in some cases it was just pure depopulation. However, there has been a significant revival. I was listening to Raidió na Gaeltachta and corncrakes appeared in Baile an Fheirtéaraigh recently. The corncrake is making a comeback and, therefore, that shows that if the circumstances are changed, the game is not over.

One of my suggestions is that we should write to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and copy the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I have waited for years for a special measure under GLAS, which used to be the rural environment protection scheme, REPS. This is up for negotiation because a new plan will come in after 2020. Instead of it being the case that the best money to be earned from environmentally friendly farming is to put land in grass and do nothing apart from keeping the grass cut, €1,000 or €2,000 should be paid to people to have kitchen gardens, or to recreate more traditional diverse farming. With small mechanical devices, much of the hard labour can be taken out of having a half acre of potatoes, vegetables or whatever. Would that be a help?

Environmental schemes such as GLAS have good features in them but they tend to lead to monoculture because it is easier to get money from a scheme if the measures are simple. I wanted a measure that would be like the trailing shoe measure where fertiliser was injected to reduce fertiliser use so that there would be a specific measure for diversity in crops. For example, certain areas set aside in the tillage sector. What were they called?