Mr. Henry O'Donnell:

I will perhaps add a wee bit to that. Deputy Carthy mentioned the fact that the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has a lot to do with this regulation. From our perspective, what we are scared of happening here, which has happened our farmers before, is that there is a broad brush approach to regulation. That can inadvertently damage our livelihoods by having regulations imposed on us that really do not make sense for our farming systems. To answer Deputy Carthy's question, we would be very concerned that we are possibly dealing with people who do not understand that there are different farming systems and each system should be subject to different regulation.

As regards what Mr. Condon touched on regarding non-derogation farmers, again, it is the same thing whereby we cannot have regulation imposed that does not apply but that is being applied to people who are not causing any damage whatsoever to watercourses. We have mentioned that farmers with different stocking levels and different nitrates levels need to be treated differently. The people designing these regulations really need to be cognisant of this and that there is a huge difference between a derogation farmer and a farmer maybe at 50 kg of nitrogen per hectare. That really has to be taken into account in the regulations.