Ms Shirley Clerkin:

The survey covers about 25 different categories of assessment for the hedges. They are assessed on their composition and their species diversity across floral, woody and tree species and then on their structure, that is, their effectiveness for livestock management, gappiness and so on. That is actually measured. In Monaghan it was found that of the unfavourable hedgerows, which account for about 87% of all hedges, 55% showed a lot of gappiness. That would be over 25% gappiness in a hedgerow, which obviously affects the hedgerow's livestock value. It also-----