Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

Here was something that slipped under everyone's radar. It is a matter we need to re-address and revisit very quickly. There is a requirement that the ground ploughed must have a green cover within six weeks of ploughing. In bad weather, one does not need to be Einstein, the youngest trainee farmer or the greatest agricultural scientist in the world to know that such a proposition causes extreme difficulties for a tillage farmer. How can a grower who has ploughed ground in the very wet conditions we have experienced with compaction or obvious consequences of using heavy machinery — something about which I know a bit — be expected to go back in and sow crops to get a green cover? Failure to do so will result in possible penalties.

Such madness in proposals reminds me about not being allowed to sell the eggs off the farm or — something I used to love to buy when travelling to Wexford — strawberries or potatoes on the side of the road. Sometimes we have things that are very precious and sacred. Those are the types of things that may well contribute to people being turned off and advocating or even registering a "No" vote in a referendum. They may well have no logical reason other than seeing something like this which they regard as completely illogical. We should be able to get across to them. We should cut out the nonsense. We know the reason for the rule, to which we would all subscribe, that the early establishment of a crop reduces the mineralisation of nitrogen and the leaching from the soil that could well arise. However, in seriously inclement weather, how can farmers create a proper seed bed? If that cannot be done, how can they obtain a proper crop establishment as there will be a poor uptake of the nutrients and trace elements, which in my view would lead to greater levels of leachate, the very problem we are trying to eradicate, and, of course, poor yields.

The question that must arise in this debate is how we arrived at this point. The question needs to be posed in a European context as to why a more lenient regime operates in the UK than pertains here. This should be subject to detailed scrutiny by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Scrutiny and I ask Deputy Perry to take it up, even on a retrospective basis.

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