Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Diametrically different perspectives have been presented and there is a danger that we pass like ships in the night with each understanding their own position. The reality is we now face a need to make urgent change so the issue is how can we make progress. I hear, from both sides, the ideal solution. On one side, farmers want 100% compensation for the loss in land value and 100% compensation for the income loss. I can understand why such a case can be made. I also understand that the data gaps make it really difficult to impose a binding categorisation on lands because you do not know the potential impact that will be imposed with data uncertainty. On the other side, I hear the environmental groups spurning market measures, which recognises the position in which farmers find themselves whereby they depend on an income from agriculture and if they do not have a compensating income from environmental management then the future of their family farm is under real pressure.

We know early movement will be rewarded but if farmers dig in their heels and say not an inch then long-term farming will lose out. So there will not be a future if we do not change yet deliver both environmental services and quality food. We have to get to a different place from the one we are at. Can both sides give an idea of how we can move forward now even though there is data uncertainty? We heard people did not know whether it was 10 tonnes or 1 tonne per hectare in different situations, which is a massive difference.

That is the basic question on which I would like to hear from the witnesses. We are not in a perfect world. We cannot achieve the perfect solution people would like. What do we now start to do? That would be helpful for the committee to understand.