Dr. Brendan Dunford:

I thank the Senator for excellent questions. I will address the first question and will ask Mr. Sheehan and Dr. Moran to address the other two. Regarding other examples in Europe, Ireland is the European leader in paying for ecosystem services. BRIDE has moved away from European innovation partnerships for the Burren and hen harrier. It has moved away from compensating and towards incentivising. The first result-based payment for ecosystem services in Ireland was developed in the Burren. It has spread to about 2,000 farmers. Hopefully in the next Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, up to 20,000 farmers will be able to avail of this, at a minimum. We are leading the way but we need to continue to lead the way and to do it well, because this is where Ireland, as a small nation, can be a leading international light. This is the way forward not just because of the structure of the payments but because it gives farmers the freedom to farm. Farmers hate being told what to do. They love using their creativity, innovation and independence to decide how they will deliver these ecosystem services. We are leading the way. I thank the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for supporting that over the last CAP period.

The notion of farmers taking ownership is important. I will gladly admit that I am not a scientist. Everything I have learned has been learned from working closely with farmers and listening carefully.

After a while, you begin to appreciate it is not just about the money. Money is very important but so too is the fairness and transparency of the payment, which is an incentive. The support in terms of technical advice is also important, but most important of all is the belief this is the right thing and this is the future. I am sure Dr. Moran would agree that whenever you talk to farmers, they always talk about legacy and leaving the land in better condition. If we can convince farmers in better condition means land that can deliver a whole suite of ecosystem services and is multifunctional in the truest sense of the word, then we are winning.

How do we do that? When we started off in the Burren, for example, farmers thought environment was a dirty word. They thought there were a bunch of academics and scientists telling them how wonderful this place was and they were just the stupid people left behind. Listening to the national discourse of late, you hear the same thing. Farmers feel they are being victimised and they are being portrayed as the ones causing the damage, as the problem and not the solution. We need to flip that on its head. We need to say we have a massive problem with our environment, climate and biodiversity but the only solution is the farmers of Ireland becoming the first responders to that problem. We must get to that point, which will be most effective. The best source of advice and inspiration for farmers is their peers, other farmers, especially at a local level. We can see the effect Mr. Sheehan and Mr. Michael Davern have had in the Burren in bringing a whole community along, and that is the way forward.

Farming for Nature is an initiative we set up a few years ago. We have identified farm leaders throughout Ireland who are doing great things for nature, producing really good food and are an inspiration to those around them. It is about opening up those farms and those farmers to other farmers so they can take ideas and inspiration from them and growing it at ground level. Farmers trust other farmers because they have lived it. We need to highlight those farmers, and Mr. Sheehan is a great example, who are producing great food but doing so in a very socially and environmentally sustainable way. We need to flip the narrative around. That is of great importance.

Regarding apps, the hen harrier project has begun the development of a field-based app for advisers to capture ecosystem services in the field. The user punches in the information, it feeds into a system and that determines the score and the payment. It is a phenomenal system. If we want to scale these approaches, we need to do so efficiently so that there is minimal cost to farmers. The apps which have been developed have made things much more efficient. Currently, they are mainly used by advisers but in future we would like to see farmers themselves capturing their ecosystem services out in the field because we want them to be able to see what they are delivering and to be able to measure it and get paid as a result.