Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have these grand objectives regarding targets, but the measures are all small. We need a big State-led and Department-led initiative that will give us the starting point in this regard. My fear is that we will end up as we have with other schemes. We will have the agri-environmental schemes and eco-schemes and all sorts of measures, but they will be short-term in the grand scheme of things. They are five-year schemes. A number of the objectives and policies of those schemes will directly contravene previous policies in this area. Under earlier CAPs people were for draining peatlands, whereas the next CAP will ask people to consider re-wetting them. We must therefore think in the long term about all of this.

How can we encourage a farmer of any size, be that a large-scale intensive dairy farm or a small-scale suckler farm - and we must encourage both types of farm because they can play two different roles in all of this - without actually telling those farmers where they will be starting from, if carbon trading will be available and whether there will be financial benefits from having reduced carbon? Without that being quantified, the actual work done will count for nothing if we do get to the point where we are paying for carbon credits.