Dr. James Moran:

I mention a concrete example of how we can make this happen. One of the things we have been trying to build on with all these projects, the EIPs and the successive pilots is that they have all happened at quite a local scale. We know the landscape of Ireland is very diverse. We often forget about how diverse it is. Different parts of the country have different capacities to produce different things. The farming example we have here are very different farms producing very different crops, maximising the potential of the particular valuable land that they have. They are in that direction because one farm is best suited to growing grass and producing dairy products from that and another farm is best suited, say the wonderful microclimate that Mr. Traas probably has, to producing the horticultural products and apples. We have advocated that the next CAP will include these co-operation projects involving local areas around the country. We divide the extensive farming areas of the country, where most of the EIPs are based, into these broad eight different landscape types, spread from the very south east up to Donegal. Starting in January 2022, once the CAP strategic plan is submitted to Brussels, we will begin these co-operation projects - that is the language in the article of CAP - which are essentially local partnership projects. First, we do a diagnosis of the area and come together with the farmers and local stakeholders and put an action plan in place so that they can design their own bespoke agri-environmental schemes, taking what is available there and what is already developed by the EIPs, their forerunners. It is sort of what is in the capital strategic plan, but the detail is not in it and the detail is critical to facilitate this to happen for 20,000 farmers. If that is successful for 20,000 in this stream of the agri-environmental programme when it is rolled out in 2023, within 24 months, by 2025, all the rest of the farmers in the country will be clamouring to have their locally adapted, results-based agri-environmental programme based on these local co-operation project areas as well. It is a challenge for our administrative system to facilitate this but I think there is will in sections of the Department to make this happen. If we can support this over the next number of months, it can facilitate this happening across the country. It is about harnessing the diversity and the power of local knowledge to design systems that will work for their particular locality. I would like to see the results-based payment systems for dairy environments. We have them for upland environments, the foothills and the low land flood planes of the Shannon Callows. We have them in areas where we have to do large-scale landscape scale rehabilitation of our midland peatland landscapes. The solutions are built at local level through, and facilitated by, policy.