Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Basic Payment Scheme and GLAS: Discussion (Resumed)

2:00 pm

Mr. Thomas Harty:

Yes, but the terms and conditions go into some more detail on that. It refers to being appropriate to the stock that is present. We would not expect sheep wire to be used where there is cattle. The Deputy mentioned an arable crop. We have found difficulty where there is one field and two farmers declare it. At times we find the tram lines running straight across the land. The Deputy can appreciate that, from our point of view, that shows no sense of a separation and the one sprayer would be used across all the area.

If it is a tillage question, there would need to be a very obvious separation of the two crops and the respective managers. The typical situation in which there is a problem is when one farmer is farming the whole thing.