Mr. Eddie Punch:

With regard to Deputy Harkin's questions, the subsidiarity question is important. The EU has referred to this in its document and claims that subsidiarity can be set aside because biodiversity is such a transnational problem that it cannot be solved by subsidiarity. That should be challenged nonetheless because, while biodiversity is an international issue, it is different between each member state and having a one-size-fits-all strategy here has to be contested.

With regard to some of the decision-making process, as the Deputy knows well, there is a process whereby the European Parliament side of the decision-making has been handed to the ENVI committee in this case and that is significant because there are many people on the ENVI committee who are not sympathetic to Irish farming. We have representatives and substitutes on the committee but considerable work will have to be done there. On the one hand, one is off to a bad start if one starts in ENVI. On the other, it is on a working group which is linked to the Environment Council of ministers of the environment. That has many implications for how this will go.

Land use came up earlier on. This whole thing has become considerably complex. We have, on the one hand, climate targets that are totally focused on emissions and, on the other hand, the land-use change sector and the storage of carbon. It seems that much of the burden for tidying up the emissions of other sectors is now being visited down on landowners.

A lot of discussion must be had here about the extent to which farmers are getting the blame for the fossil fuel and energy sectors.

This is massively complex. I am not at all satisfied we as farm organisations have the resources to deal with this stuff coming at us. I am not entirely sure the Department of Agriculture has the resources to deal with it either. I was told by Department officials they thought some of these measures may be voluntary but who is going to volunteer to sign up for rewetting? There is also discussion, by the way, about carbon credits and there is work afoot in the EU to decide whether farmers can be given some financial reward for storing carbon, but this is a hugely complex and not widely understood area. It is quite obvious all the farm organisations here do not have the personnel and resources, and that is in contrast to the huge resources that seem to be available to the environmental lobby at an EU level.