Mr. Paul Moore:

Initially, the proposal was that you had to cultivate 100% of stubble. It was only through BirdWatch pointing out the importance of stubble that the proportion you have to cultivate was reduced to 75% to 80%. I think the Department reached that decision based on research from England. As I said, no studies have been done in Ireland. I made the point - the Deputy was not in the room at the time - that, generally, in terms of environmental issues, biodiversity comes at the bottom. I am not dissing the other issues, like climate change, water quality, air quality and so on, but biodiversity, in my opinion, generally comes low down. That probably informs some of that as to how that decision was reached.