Mr. Patrick Bruton:

The Department continues to claim that GLAS and afforestation are compatible but they are not. GLAS is not a whole-of-farm scheme. Generally, however, when a farmer gets into a plan, he or she is in it for the five years. This is not a criticism of GLAS at all but rather a criticism of the compatibility between GLAS, which is an environmental scheme, and forestry, which at its heart is an environmental scheme. Yet, with a single person in charge of both, there were 682 participants from a total of 48,000 in GLAS who planted land. That does not represent compatibility.