Ms Louise Byrne:

Our expectation of how this will work in practice is that farmers will be registered as professional fertiliser end-users at the start and the identification number will be their herd number. Obviously a farmer from the North does not have to provide a herd number. To be honest, there is no definitive way we will know that, but we will have the overall data about fertiliser flows. We will seek to verify that data having regard to our risk-based controls under the nitrates action programme that my colleague Mr. Massey can speak about; under integrated controls division, ICD, cross-compliance checks; and also under the eco-schemes. The matter must be considered in the round and when we look at all of the data together we will be in a better position to assess whether there is full compliance with the database.

It is in everyone's interests to have full compliance. As part of our extension of the nitrates derogation we gave a commitment to the European Commission that we would have a national fertiliser database. From our point of view, it has many other significant benefits as this national fertiliser database will seek to achieve many of the objectives we pursue relating to our environmental and climate ambitions. We want a fully functioning system that is reliable and accurate. We accept any new system needs a period of bedding-in and we need to build compliance. We will actively engage with farmers. We have made the system as simple as possible to try to encourage regulatory compliance. We are learning as we go and are taking on board stakeholder views at our stakeholder committee.