Mr. Fintan Kelly:

We have been involved in a couple of different types of stakeholder forums and there is definitely a need for multi-stakeholder forums, ones which would have farming representatives and representatives from the environmental sector.

From my own experiences I feel that sometimes the forums are not independent enough. Often, stakeholder forums shadow an interdepartmental steering group, and ultimately, the end outputs are determined by the Department. Those outcomes are obviously influenced by the politics and the lobbying that happens behind the scenes.

An example I would give would be the curlew task force, which was independently chaired. I feel that the recommendations that came out of that probably went beyond what might have happened in a more traditional forum like the hen harrier threat response plan consultative committee, which had a similar remit but the outputs were quite different.

My suggestion would be that whether it is phase 2 of the land use review or a stakeholder forum looking specifically at the nature restoration law, there is need for a stakeholder forum involving farmers and environmentalists. Ideally, that would be independently chaired and facilitated or we could give our own feedback to the State, as opposed to commenting on a fait accomplifrom the State.