Mr. John Murphy:

I will add one point on the issue of planning permission. Perhaps we should try to think outside the box and look for some sort of exemption. There are currently exemptions where the development is below a certain number of square metres and is located more than 100 m from a dwelling house. However, the exemption level is very small. Planning for stand-alone slurry storage needs to be fast-tracked. Last year, a whole season was lost in the TAMS. Time is not our friend here. It is no good approving slurry storage works in the middle of September because no one will dig a hole in the middle of October to put a tank into it because it is just not practical. On the planning side, could the planning legislation going through the Oireachtas be looked at? Members might be in a position to do that.

The Deputy made the point that farmers are taking on more measures and more cost. Commercial farmers in particular have to bear the brunt of that cost to maintain their business at current levels. We are swimming harder to stand still. The grant structure is very important to make it affordable for farmers.

On ACRES and whether farmers can do more for water quality and environmental issues, it has gone extremely complicated. Look at the number of payments farmers get this year compared with their old single farm payment five years ago. There is stuff coming into their bank accounts and they do not know what it is for. The Department did not tool up for that in terms of staff. Suddenly, we are left with a mess and the mess then pushed back stuff like TAMS because the Department, in its wisdom, decided that payments were more important than getting sanction for grants. The TAMS stuff was put to the side, the Department failed to make the single farm payments on time and there was then a huge issue with ACRES. The whole thing has become so complicated from an administrative perspective. If you ask any agriculture adviser, they have their hair torn out and they are sick of it.

That is a really bad narrative to have in the industry as a whole. It is just completely negative. I am not a negative person by nature. We have to find practical solutions to this thing. We are in a situation where the country is reasonably financed. We do not have enough staff or IT expertise in the Department of agriculture to administer these huge things. They benefit all society; not just farmers.