Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food
Supports for Private Advisory Providers Delivering Advice on Nitrates and Water Quality Improvements: Agricultural Consultants Association
2:00 am
Mr. Noel Feeney:
Regarding the slurry movements, if you are moving that slurry to me as a farmer, we will get text messages, but if I am your adviser on the opposite end to take in the slurry, I do not get a text message. The farmer does. Maybe the farmer presumes we are getting the text messages but we are certainly not. We are blissfully unaware in a lot of situations that there is a movement of slurry. As Mr. Canning would highlight, there was a large number of unverified movements of slurry on the Department base last year. That is one of the reasons. In fairness, proper slurry movements within nitrates rules and regulations must be adhered to, but we are in the dark.
We also mentioned earlier on that we do annual CPD training. In the most recent CPD training, there was an issue on fraud, etc. Again, that is the insinuation that we have got from our most recent CPD training.