Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief as most of the questions I intended asking have already been asked, that last question being one of them. I see the relevance and the importance of the Bill and I welcome it. We want to see it in action but there is a slight flaw in the sense that the register is going to record what a person purchases, not what is spread. I can see the Northern Ireland Border issue being a problem. It has been a problem throughout all our lives as where there is a border, there will always be something coming over or back across it that should not be and will never be recorded anywhere. If we get down to the environmental issues, there is also the amount of fertiliser that is spread on a particular square meterage of land. If you stockpile your fertiliser, if as a dairy farmer you have had a good year and you buy in a lot of fertiliser at the end of that year, nobody is ever going to know where or when it was spread or at what rate it was put on the land. Again, if the Minister of State is doing his environmental calculations and I have 100 acres and I buy the standard equivalent amount of fertiliser as somebody with 100 acres would buy, how does he know I am not putting all of that fertiliser on 50 acres and none on the other 50? From an environmental point of view, it is a problem that we will be recording what we purchase and not what we spread and where we spread it.