Mr. Colm Hayes:

Communication is absolutely key and Dr. Ní Dhubháin touched on it as well in asking what is the message for farmers. The analysis we have for the reasons the current programme is not hitting its targets indicates farmers are disengaging from the programme, to be honest. We want to see them back where they were and being the main beneficiaries. The messages here are absolutely around agroforestry schemes and the farm forestry message. We are working very closely with Teagasc and the Agricultural Consultants Association - the private advisers - to get that message out there.

It is not about one or the other and having livestock or trees. It can absolutely be both and one can maintain the same number of livestock while planting some trees. There is massive benefit in a diversified income and a person would not be subject to the fluctuations in a market in a particular year. That person would also have a State-backed guaranteed premium for 15 years.

The question of ash dieback was raised but I dispute slightly the idea that the State left people hanging. The Department swung into action very quickly with a scheme on foot of the discovery of the presence of Chalara at the time. We suspended the scheme last year, as the Deputy knows, and we engaged with stakeholders on that. The suspension occurred because the science changed and when the science changes, the policy must also change. The science indicated the original aims of the scheme, laudable as they were, concerned eradication and that was no longer possible. The disease is now essentially endemic.

We pulled the scheme and worked on it. It has gone out to the relevant stakeholders now for consultation and there is a date of approximately mid-January for feedback. The supports that were there will still be there, albeit modified. People who are dealing with infected trees must know it is there. They know it is there, although it may not be moving at the pace they would like. There are supports for those who, unfortunately, are dealing with infection.