Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegation and thank them for the presentation. As always it is thoughtful and helpful. The NPWS has a difficult job but it is a really important one at the moment.

As I see it, part of the service's work is encouraging people along the way and that must be recognised. I will take a couple of examples in County Clare, which is obviously the area I know best in that regard. The service has done really good work in the Burren and in many other areas throughout the county and that is recognised. However, I am concerned the work done by the NPWS does not always feed into where the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is at. I will give two examples. Initially, there were areas designated for the hen harrier in east Clare. Farmers were resistant to the notion of having lands designated because it put a certain burden on them. However, at the time the then Minister put in place a scheme that provided compensation and it was accepted by the farmers. It was not a lot of money, but it allowed them get on with their business, and so they accepted the designation. Unfortunately, that is now gone, so farmers signed up to designation and have lost the support, and that is under the new agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES.

There is a similar situation in the Burren, where a really wonderful project was developed in consultation with the farmers. Dr. Brendan Dunford and others put together a marvellous project, that got buy-in from farmers that people would never expected, wherein an appropriate level of farming activity was going to maintain the natural flora and fauna of the region. It is a project highlighted across Europe as best-in-class and best practice. The new ACRES does not benefit, and in fact reduces, the moneys to the farmers in the region and spreads funding more widely and thinly across other areas, which really disincentivises these farmers continuing to do what they are doing.

They can change their practices and they still will not be in breach of any regulations but it will impact the environment negatively. Really, I am asking Dr. Bleasdale for some of their thoughts on those two particular projects. I am not asking him to be critical, but to give his assessment of how important the work that was done had been in getting farmers on board, and how it will now be a disincentive if those supports are not to be maintained. Farmers quite clearly have an expectation based on their projected incomes because they have to live as well. They have to educate their kids and they have to live their lives. It is tight living in some of those areas. There are no big farmers here. They may have a lot of acreage but the capacity to deliver a return is very limited.