Mr. Vincent Roddy:

Mr. Whelan, Mr. Gorman and Mr. Punch have covered the points about the charter. To add to that, I understand it is a requirement under the CAP protocols as well that there would be a farmers' charter of rights. It needs to by updated and clearly we need to get that addressed. We pointed that out in our statement. The appeals are one element, but the first thing is to ensure the farmers' charter works and works effectively. What Mr. Punch has outlined clearly illustrates there are problems. It may not be around the farmers' charter, but it is a clear indication of the imbalance we are seeing between the farmer and the Department of Agriculture. The charter is a means to do that and the appeals are another means to do that. We need to recognise that.

The Senator mentioned the monitoring of farming activity. I do not know who mentioned it earlier, but we talked about the area monitoring system and the new satellite monitoring. I think it was Mr. Gorman who mentioned that. We are moving, effectively, towards 100% monitoring of farms on certain aspects. Maybe I will stand corrected on this, but with LEADER funding, where there is 100% monitoring the penalties are much lower. The reason we have high penalties is to discourage farmers, from the Department's point of view, from doing wrong, for want of a better term. If we are moving to full monitoring of farmers we may need to look again - that is not necessarily for here - at the penalty regime as well, because the real problem for a lot of farmers is not just the penalties-----