Mr. Colm Hayes:

On the last point raised by Deputy Brassil and Deputy McConalogue around the honouring of an agreement from 2007, I emphasise again that this Department was not party to any agreement in 2007. That was something, as I understand it, that was related to the designation of the land. It was a bilateral arrangement between the designated farmers and the National Parks and Wildlife Service. I am not going to comment on it because it is not under our responsibility, and therefore I am not in a position to comment on it.

However, our Department's point of view, and the Minister has been very clear on this, is that our rural development programme, which is now €4.5 billion, is about providing a payment which recognises the public good many farmers provide. By public good I mean the environmental good. That is why we have a €1.2 billion GLAS scheme which, as I said, provides payments of up to €7,000 and a guaranteed entry for farmers with a hen harrier action.

We have a €200 million areas of natural constraint, ANC scheme, and the Minister has committed to an additional €25 million in the budget for 2018. Some announcements are to come in due course on the actual allocation of that. Then we come to the locally led schemes and the hen harrier scheme. I respectfully disagree with those who say the two can be divorced because they are not related. In actual fact, when the designated budget under GLAS for farmers with a hen harrier action and this scheme are combined, the total figure is more than €90 million. That is there for farmers with designated land for hen harrier reasons. That is a sizeable sum of money and it will go directly into the pockets of those farmers between now and the end of the lifetime of the rural development programme.

I emphasise as well, as some Deputies and indeed the IFDL have mentioned, the question of what happens under the next CAP and the next rural development programme. The Minister has announced a national consultation phase on the shape of the next Common Agricultural Policy and the next rural development programme. The meetings start as soon as next Monday. The first meeting is in Carlow. It is important, and I reiterate what the Minister has said, that the thinking has started as to what the shape of the next Common Agricultural Policy will be and the next rural development programme.

Interested organisations and individuals, and civic society generally, need to get out there and make their voices heard. There is a process with which to engage. The details of all the meetings are on the Department's website. It is also possible to make written submissions at this stage. We also expect proposals to complement the European Commission's CAP communication at some stage. That too is a very important point for those who are wondering about the shape of discussions after that.

Forestry has come up a lot today. As others have outlined, the protocol put in place in 2007 was not fully utilised. As to whether this was an issue of demand on behalf of those farmers or of other factors, our understanding is certainly that demand was not what it might have been in terms of the quota made available for those years. If one looks at the likes of Mullaghareirk mountains, the combined uptake for 2007 to 2009 barely equalled the quota for one particular year. The discussion on that has moved on and the issue is now very firmly parked within the threat response plan which was mentioned earlier. Discussion with the European Commission is ongoing in this regard, led by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS. The Minister, Deputy Michael Creed, and the Department have had strong input into that discussion and have made it known that we believe there should be scope for some sort of afforestation within that threat response plan. As I have said, that matter is under discussion at the moment between the NPWS and the European Commission. We await the outcome of that. I understand there will be a public consultation phase when the time comes, so there will be an opportunity for input.

Some questions were raised on operational aspects of the scheme. The Chairman suggested earlier that it might be useful for the committee to hear about those. I might give the floor to Mr. Monaghan as he is project manager.