Mr. Donal Sheehan:

I do not think the question about roadside safety was answered. In the BRIDE project, roadside hedges are scored in the same way as internal hedges. They are expected to be side-trimmed, but there is no obligation on any farmer to cut and shave them, as is often seen. Farmers get penalised if their hedges are overgrown and encroaching onto the road.

As for the half-acre's worth of carbon sequestration a farmer might have, we now have an app with which we score farmland habitats and we are able to measure accurately all habitats on a farm. Generally speaking, the gardens scored are usually full of ornamental species and there is a lot of pesticide use, though not always. There is bark mulch and lawn, which does not have a high biodiversity value compared with a native hedge.