Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

My apologies if I have to leave before the witnesses have completed their responses. I thank them. It has been very interesting.

First, I would say most of us share their frustration. However, I would say leadership needs to be shown everywhere. It is not only Government. The Opposition needs to show leadership, quite frankly, and it is not doing that either. We are being caught between a rock and a hard place. There is a toxic narrative that needs to stop.

Mr. Traas mentioned the media and the part they have to play. Certainly, if you look through farmers' media in general rather than mention one in particular, there needs to be more of these stories. Definitely, we are hearing the farming for nature stories but we are not hearing enough of them. It is not enough to say the proportion of people who are in results-based schemes is quite low and therefore we are reflecting what is there. We know we need to boost that. Any farmer I speak to wants to get into results-based schemes and, therefore, that narrative needs to come out. I am leaving them space to talk more about their frustrations, but also, maybe, to broaden it, because we want to do the right thing.

Anything that can be pointed to specifically that needs to be done, the committee will take on board. It will be on the record of this committee. What Mr. Traas has done today has been very valuable.

Mr. Traas mentioned agroforestry and the role orchards might play on farmland. When he talks about the app, that relates to very small projects. I want to make sure that we are getting something that means we can have that kind of diversity around the country, where it is not a ten-point kind of system, although I know that is not what he meant. That means we have to leave places for orchards and for different things, not just based on land but on the kind of diversity that we need in our food system and soil system, for instance.