Mr. Tom?s O'Toole:

The only point I want to make regarding liming is that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine sent guys out a couple of years ago to do nationwide soil-sampling. Results came back from that and all the farmers got a good, detailed report. One main point from it was that pH was low. It has been mentioned before that nationwide, many farmers were below a pH of 6.5. I do not think there should be a budget for the liming. Every farmer is restricted in how much they can put out per acre, otherwise there is no value in it. As was mentioned before, it is about 2 to 3 tonnes per year. If any genuine farmers were going to put out lime, they could only put out that amount per acre. With the push to move to organics, one thing that can be put out is lime. Many farmers have moved to organics in the last couple of years with the incentives that are there, which would hopefully help, and they are allowed to put out lime.

The liming programme is now over-subscribed and that will have an effect on the farmers who joined, including me. I have applied for the liming scheme and obviously I do not think I will get the amount of lime I have put in. That is what I wanted to put forward.