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

The one thing that will be thrown back at anybody who is engaging with farmers is the assertion that the farmers received State money to take out hedges and they are now being asked to put them back in. I suppose it is an example of the long-term damage done by ill thought-out policies. It has been outlined fairly well, but in terms of the actual mechanics of paying people for sequestering carbon and for maintaining hedges, do the witnesses see that as being best delivered through eco-schemes, agri-environmental schemes or another mechanism? That is considering that if we choose the former, there is a chance that perhaps the farmers that we most need to be encouraging to engage in these practices might not actually be participating in them. How do we get around that?