Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will raise the issue of marrying up schemes, which the Chairman has, in fairness, raised on numerous occasions, in addition to me and other members. I am hearing a negative view from people in the sector who, in the past day or two, met officials in the Department who are drawing up the schemes. If a farmer went on the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, was on it for two years and then applied for a forestry licence, which could take a year or two, that farmer could not get the licence and was basically in a straitjacket. If some farmer wants to sow three, four or five acres of trees under the new rural environment protection scheme, REP, or whatever the new environmental scheme is called - which will help with nitrates and sequestration - and part of the land is stuck in the section that was in REP, will the Department look at that to ensure that farmer is not paying back over five years or is not screwed like that? Is the Department willing to look at that and to give a commitment that the scheme will be workable? Everyone is talking about trees but nobody seems able to give the go-ahead to sow them.