Mr. Ian Lumley:

I will come in on the hill farming issue, which the Deputy raised. I know Tipperary very well. I have cycled all over it. The county has hilly areas in addition to the well-known Golden Vale. As explained in our submission, the European Court of Auditors report is very clear that billions of European taxpayer subsidies in environmental schemes, which in Ireland are REPS and GLAS, have been effectively wasted because they have not delivered their intended results. There is now an opportunity under the European green deal and the integration of the farm to fork strategy with the biodiversity strategy, which will be of particular benefit to those hill farming areas. Extensive consideration and positive recommendations are set out in section 2 of the new policy document, which comes from at least 70 organisations and which is endorsed by ourselves.

It has not been so much an issue in Tipperary but certainly in other parts of the country there has been a major problem with land burning. The Irish Wildlife Trust, which is one of our fellow members of the Irish Environmental Network, has very much highlighted that the single farm payment system under the Common Agricultural Policy forces people in these hilly scrubland areas to maintain their land to an agricultural grazing standard, which forces the owners to burn land. It can be difficult to control a fire. I can give an example affecting our property a couple of weeks ago. A landowner in Tyrone was burning land and did not notify the adjoining property owners. Our nature reserve area would have been affected but, fortunately, another landowner, who is a game warden, was able to intervene. He discovered that the fire was jumping across a public road from the landholding where the burning was taking place. It was only by bringing up a gang to put out the fire with shovels - those involved were forced to breathe in smoke - that a serious incident was averted.

Major action is needed to curtail the fire problem and to come up with a better support system and better management of these hilly areas for the members of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association. An extensive section of Towards A New Agricultural and Food Policy for Ireland deals with this. In the context of our direct involvement in County Monaghan, I will be involved in a conference call tomorrow on how we can advance the concept of agroforestry. We are a practical organisation and we do not just talk. We want to see everything we see here translated into action and to work with farmers and communities on this.