Mr. Pat Murphy:

They will, more than likely. Farmers will be going to the person giving them assistance with their basic income support for sustainability, BISS, formerly basic payment system, BPS. It is reasonably unlikely that there will be a significant charge because it will be a relatively speedy process. However, in our case it will mean engagement for an adviser. If I am an adviser with 200 clients with half of them capable of doing it themselves, for the other half, 100 tasks need to be done this year. We would like the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, possibly in conjunction with Teagasc, to have a very strong information and support campaign to help farmers and make them aware of what is coming up. That extends to some other changes with nitrates this year. The two should potentially be done together.

If they are having any difficulty logging on or doing what they need to do there should be a good helpline support to assist them. Without that, we will end up with more advisers' time taken up with an administrative task which is not onerous for those who know what to do, but for those who do not know what to do it is onerous and problematic.

Overall, at one level this has a capacity to introduce extra tasks. At another level it has the capacity to take tasks away from farmers. For instance, derogation farmers from 2024 onwards will no longer have to do the work in preparing fertiliser records. Farmers who are getting an inspection will not need to do that. A significant task will be taken out of the system for a moderate number of farmers with a small task put in in its place for a larger number of farmers.