Ms Oonagh Duggan:

The CAP budget is €9.8 billion, which is a huge pot of money. If that money was well targeted, we could, through that pot, make huge headway on water, climate and biodiversity, with farmers doing the work and us supporting them. The Deputy also asked if the Department is meeting the objectives of its needs assessment. In our view, the CAP regulation is weak. There was a lot of horse trading in the final negotiation. Negotiating is difficult with 27 member states arguing for different levels of ambition. In terms of the regulation, Ireland has stepped up in regard to some elements of the CAP strategic plan. It has an opportunity to step up further under a particular article, the number of which escapes me at this time.

In terms of water, there are measures within the CAP that could help but, again, not enough of the funding is being targeted towards effective actions that can happen on the ground. At BirdWatch Ireland we often find that bespoke advice, which we get from engaging with farmers about their farms and what is happening in their areas, is what matters most. They have a huge pride in what they are doing, especially when they learn about species. I am sure it would be the same with water when they learn about the measures they can put in place. If they are supported financially to put those measures in place, it makes a lot more sense to them and, obviously, to their pockets. We would like to see a lot more targeting. Within the agri-environment scheme measures on water there is some targeting but given that there are 130,000 farmers, that targeting reaches only a very small proportion of them. That is the issue. As I said, there is some targeting, but it does not reach everybody.

In regard to the eco-scheme, between the conditionality of the basic payment through to the eco-scheme, that is where one gets the biggest gains, again because one is targeting 130,000 farmers. Under the agri-environment scheme, we reach about 50,000 farmers but we reach fewer of them under the co-operative projects element which is even more targeted. We could be achieving a lot more with the money we have.