Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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Thank you Chairman. I welcome Mr. Fitzgerald again here today and the farmers and others in the audience. Deputy Cahill summed a lot of it up there. The issue is very clear as far as I am concerned. What we have is designation without any compensation, and that is a problem that we have in many parts of the country for various things. The EU comes in - we had it with our bogs and various other issues - and says this is an important asset for the whole country, not just for the owners of the land, and therefore the State is going to put some kind of a designation on it. This basically restricts the use of property and when one restricts the use of land, one devalues it. That is the problem here. The devaluing of the land occurs in many parts of the country, and there is a particular focus on the hen harrier issue here. In many areas farmers are farming the way they have always farmed and it is not affecting them from the point of what they normally do but it does affect them from the point of view of whether they are able to borrow on that land or able to sell that land. There is a little more to it than that. The way the farmer has traditionally farmed the land was protecting the environmental status of that land. We need that to continue. I know there was an issue in the past in the Burren, where there were big restrictions in the number of stock, and it actually went in the other direction in that they needed farmers to have a certain level of stock to ensure that the environment was protected properly. What we are saying here is that the farmer is providing a service to the State and to the environment and we need to pay the farmer adequately for it.

Farmers are providing a service to the State and in respect of the environment. To provide that service, we need to pay farmers adequately for it. There must be a scheme for farmers who are on designated land to get something in order to ensure that they provide the service to which I refer. Naturally, all the schemes would have conditions attached to them. GLAS and the other schemes from the past are environmental schemes for everybody. There is, however, a particular aspect to this because the land has a specific designation attached to it and there will be a requirement to have something extra to compensate for that designation.

I am aware that the issue around sale of the land has been brought up and if someone sells their land they may only receive half the price per hectare as non-designated lands, a price which could somehow be topped up. If there was an adequate scheme in place, there would not be a difference regarding the value of the property. If a State sponsored scheme was in place that the Government stood over, then it would clearly be there into the future. It would, therefore, enhance the value of the land and ensure that it would not fall behind other land values.

The biggest problem facing many of the farmers I meet throughout the State - and certainly in my area in Leitrim and west Cavan - arises when officials from the National Parks and Wildlife Service come in and say that a certain wildflower has the potential to grow in two particular fields and, therefore, the farmer can never do anything with the land again. There is very little explanation coming from these officials. They seem to be able to ride roughshod over everything but without providing an adequate explanation as to how or why they can do so or outlining from where their powers come. How these guys can go in and do that is a big issue that needs to be dealt with. They just walk in and say "Sorry guys you are not going to plant that land or do anything with it because we have designated it". There is a real issue that needs to be looked at in respect of the criteria relating to designated lands in this regard. It is happening all over the place and farmers can do nothing when they are wiped out overnight.

The solution is to put an adequate compensation scheme in place for the designation. Until this happens, we will have a big problem. The point was made that the Department or some other entity would make up the balance if the farmer sold the land. I do not believe this would work and it is not a direction in which we should seek to go. There should be scheme put in place that will adequately compensate for the land designation. When this is in place it should be separate and distinct from GLAS schemes or any other general scheme for farmers. It must be specifically for farmers with designated lands. The sooner such a scheme is brought into place the better. I do not believe that the Minister's recently announced scheme is adequate. I do not believe it can do enough. Somebody needs to go back to the drawing board and let them know that.

There are only some 4,000 farmers affected by this issue currently. This figure may increase if more farmers' lands are designated. As matters stand, it is not a major big issue and that may be why it has not been resolved sooner. I accept that it may not be a big issue from one perspective. It will not cost a terribly large amount of money to resolve if the right effort is made and if there is the proper consensus-building between the farmers involved, the Department and the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The only person who can stand over the building of that consensus is the Minister. The Minister has to step up to the plate to ensure we can build the consensus and we can come up with a solution that can work.