Dr. Liam Hanrahan:

I thank the Deputy. The social impacts undoubtedly will be massive. We cannot underestimate the potential knock-on impacts on the next generation. Farmers like ourselves are already involved. We are in farming and it makes it quite difficult to make a plan for the future but if you were starting out or planning to start out in five years' time, it makes it a lot worse. You have other career options that might be more attractive or offer more certainty. If you go into a job in pharmaceuticals, you are almost guaranteed progression in terms of salary or management if those are your goals. When involved as a young farmer, however, you are not necessarily guaranteed to have an increased income year on year. There are no incremental increases guaranteed as it is all down to the work you do yourself. If you are making improvements and investments in your farm year on year and suddenly you are being put backwards due to factors beyond your control, it makes it ten times worse. Everyone can understand when you are running your own business you are taking on the risk of doing so. That is part of it but factors that you cannot control are impacting your business, as the Deputy alluded to, and are changing the goalposts. On changing the derogation limits, for example, due to water quality, there is no guarantee of improving the water quality by bringing down the derogation limits. It is an extremely crude way of guaranteeing a reduction at farm level. In terms of farm viability, productivity, profit potential, potential for generation renewal or potential for employing labour or making investments, we need to be able to invest to make improvements and implement measures such as equipment for less slurry. That costs money. The majority of the measures cost money but can deliver farmers extra profit if allowed to produce extra food. The extra production that comes from the efficiency of the uses of the new technologies is what delivers for the farmers. If it is not possible to produce extra food, there is no incentive to implement the technologies that are available now and will become available into the future. The Deputy alluded to it herself in terms of a long-term plan.

We would like to see a ten-year year plan on the actions that are going to happen here. Are there other measures that can be taken or are there other impact factors that can be considered, as opposed to just organic nitrogen in the case of certain measures not being met? It does feel as though consistently more stringent factors are being implemented, no matter what. As for whether we will meet stable water quality status, there is the potential for improvement. It is scientifically proven that water quality will improve based on mitigating factors and the measures farmers have implemented already and are continuing to implement from an agricultural perspective. From an agricultural perspective, we know we are improving but it is the uncontrollables, which include climate and weather that we cannot predict. Is there anything Dr. Snell would like to add to that?