Mr. Tim Cullinan:

I thank Deputy Fitzmaurice. The Chairman is right that there were a lot of questions. I will go through them as fast as I can. The Deputy's first question was on the excretion rate bands and whether they will force farmers more towards Jersey cows or Jersey-cross cows. That is a decision for farmers themselves. Whatever types of animals a farmer wants to farm, we will leave that decision to him or her. We have a proposal under the CAP reform around the dairy herd. It is a dairy beef scheme. There is a proposal there that if farmers are genotyping their animals, there would be a payment around that. That is an area we are looking at.

The Deputy is right in regard to the water treatment plants. It is a concern, as I said in my opening remarks. There are more monitoring points on rivers and they are being monitored by the EPA. We will ask that those results be put on the table. Anything farmers can do that will help with water quality is welcome. We all want to farm in an environmentally sustainable way. We are up for this challenge and we want to see the results. It is important that we are not held in the dark in this regard. It is fine for one side to be able to see what is going on out there, the impact coming from the large towns and the impact further downstream. It is critical that this information is available to us.

The Deputy makes a valuable point around contractors. Approximately 80% of the work is done by contractors.

Again, that comes back to condensing the closed period, putting more pressure on contractors and farmers being able to get a contractor at the proper time. The Deputy referred to grants for contractors. Most contractors are farmers anyway, so they would be covered in that regard. The Deputy is correct that there are 7,300 farmers in derogation. Those are farmers who have taken on a business, driven it and invested substantial amounts of their own money in it. That opportunity is there for any farmer who wishes to go down that road. The other option is to stay within the 170 kg limit. In certain parts of the country, such as areas where a lot of dairy farms were developed, the availability of land is a factor. That goes back again to the excretion rates we are discussing. If there are changes in that regard, it will put pressure on the availability of land, which will be another cost for farmers. All of this change is not going to bring an environmental improvement. However, it will impact on the cost for farmers as well.

The Deputy referred to the 30 km limit. We need to get practical here. For a sheep farmer in his part of the country, for example, 30 km is nothing. I was in County Donegal recently. I know the Deputy travels up and down such counties. It is about farmers who have small pieces of land in different areas, land which they may have inherited or whatever as a result of family circumstances through the years. The proposal is totally impractical. The Deputy also referred to regionalising the dates. We already have longer closed periods in various areas of the country. That is there already.

Deputy Fitzmaurice spoke about grants for slurry stores. His point relates to the situation if a grant for soiled water were to be brought in. We need to be careful here. There is already a system in place to deal with soiled water. There is are minute amounts of nutrients in that soiled water and if it is dispersed in a proper fashion on farmland, extra storage is not needed. The Deputy is right that it would only put more cost on farmers.

As regards the Deputy's final point on anaerobic digestion, without proper funding or a proper feed-in tariff, it is not going to work. It goes back to the point made by Senator Boyhan. We need to look at this as an alternative source of income for farmers.