Mr. Niall Curley:

Completely new provisions and measures will have to be put in place. There are schemes already in place for example, farmed peat in the midlands that aims to restore peat on farmlands. There are some smaller schemes that do this work but also the Bord na Móna scheme. The Government can look at what already happens. For example, a couple of acres, which adds up to the percentage that Ireland has, will begin to fulfil the target. Overall, completely new measures will be put in place to fulfil the target.

On the percentage of land that will be put beyond use and supports to be put in place, this will come down to available funding. If my memory serves me correctly, the EU has pointed out that 12 EU funds should be able to fulfil this. According to my PowerPoint presentation that I circulated today, there is €14 billion to go to member states from 2021 to 2027 and this will cost about €7 billion a year. While that technically fits into half of the funding it does not take into account the other biodiversity funding that has already been put in place and utilised for other systems.

The scheme is completely disconnected from what measures will be needed. The main issue is to get farmers and forest owners or landowners in general to put in measures on the ground to rewet lands, plant trees and rewild to a certain extent but depending on the condition of the land. The measures have not been fashioned and the funding is not necessarily there. Currently, they will have to depend on the Common Agricultural Policy or CAP eco-schemes, the European agricultural fund for rural development, EAFRD, and the European agricultural guarantee fund or EAGFunder CAP. A complete dependency on CAP funding is going to be used. One of the things that I as a representative of COPA-COGECA, alongside other stakeholders, land-based stakeholders and even green NGOs - with whom we seldom agree about a lot of things - agree on is that an EU nature restoration funding should be set in place here under multi-annual financial framework, MFF, negotiations in 2026-2027. Without that these targets will never be fulfilled and the money for the schemes that are not peatland-based will never be fulfilled. It is mainly about talking to the landowners and explaining why it is important this work is done, how it is done and what are the benefits. Restoration is important but the issue is getting there. If the money is not there and the extent of the law overreaches then nobody will benefit and this provision will literally be a waste.

The CAP will run up until 2027 so that is the current one that has eco-schemes, which we have just put in place. These are short-term measures for long-term goals up until 2050. Therefore, these measures are not adequate for long-term planning, especially when building a national restoration plan up until 2050.