Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and the witnesses. I have a couple of questions, for whoever wants to take them. What percentage of farmers are actively sampling soil? How is the Department, through farm advisory boards and bodies such as Teagasc, encouraging farmers who are not doing soil sampling to do so? In the same vein as Deputy Carthy was speaking about, I have a question about hedgerows. The old rural environmental protection scheme, REPS, was set up some years ago and is over now. Is there any agri-environment scheme that should be modelled on that? There was great participation by many farmers. Specifically on the matter of hedgerows, is there any specific tree or plant that is more suitable than others? There are many hedgerows on farmlands that I believe are not beneficial with what we are looking for here. I believe there should be some incentive to be part of the next scheme. The witnesses said that it will be announced by the Minister shortly. I think that is the way we should go, as we did with the old scheme. There has not been the same amount of planting in recent years as there was previously.

The other issue relates to forestry. This committee has done much work raising the issue of forestry and trying to sort it out. I think we are going backwards rather than forwards. I know there is a new appointment in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Hopefully that will make a difference. I am not sure what sort of difference it would make in the short term. Many farmers had considered planting forestry, of between 10 and 40 acres, but now they are not going ahead because they have seen the fiasco with licensing for felling, planting and everything else. I do not blame them, with how the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is treating forestry. How do the witnesses feel that they will encourage and entice farmers back into planting forests? Part of its remit is to get farmers to plant forests.