Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister, Deputy Deenihan, for coming to the House to respond to what I have to say on this issue. He will be aware that the correct sheep and cattle stocking levels on hill farms in the west of Ireland have been a matter of contention since the sheep premium was introduced in the 1970s. The introduction of the sheep premium caused two problems. The incentive to increase numbers at the expense of quality and sustainability meant that the price of sheep collapsed over time because of excess numbers and poor quality and that ecological damage took place. When a system incentivises bad practice, hard-pressed farmers will go with the flow. Recognising the damage caused by its policy, the EU reversed engines and for the past ten years pushed a policy of destocking. I accept some destocking was necessary but local farmers, who understand the hills better than anyone, now say that under-grazing is becoming a problem and that this could have even more serious consequences than over-grazing and it could be more difficult to resolve.

The Maamturks and Twelve Bens were very significantly destocked in recent years, on orders from the Minister's Department. If a hill becomes under-grazed, the issues arising relate to the growth of wooded material which sheep will not graze and this material then takes over the hill. This, in turn, leads to fires, especially in a dry spring season, which cause major ecological damage and present a significant hazard to human life and property. The only answer to under-grazing is to restock the hills, but this is not as simple as destocking on open hills such as in Connemara. The only way of restocking a hill is to breed the stock on the hill. Bought-in stock placed on a mountain, just like homing pigeons, will go back to the mountain on which they were reared. It is not a question of restocking by buying 50 more ewes and putting them out on the hill because it will be the case that the person who sold the ewes will end up with both the money and the ewes again.

The Minister will also be aware that on the hills in Connemara, for every 100 ewes put to the ram, one is lucky to get a survival rate into the first year of 79 lambs or 0.7% of a lamb per ewe. This is in the case of good hills while on the poorer hills it could be even lower. As half of these lambs will be ewe lambs and the others will be male lambs, the reality is there will be 0.35% of a ewe lamb to every ewe on the hill. One must then deduct from this statistic the fact that up to 10% of the sheep on a hill in a place like Connemara can die every year. I know this is a fact from my experience of running a hill farm. The older ewes must be sold. If one takes out the 15% sales, 10% mortality, one has 0.15% of an extra ewe per annum for every ewe. One hundred ewes will produce a very small gain and numbers will be very slow to increase.

It is imperative, therefore, before numbers become too small and before the under-grazing problems becomes too big an issue, that farmers would be allowed to restock their holdings. The National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, should not use excuses about resources but rather they should immediately review the number of stock each farmer is permitted to have.

It is also imperative that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht continue to pay compensation to farmers. There is no point in saying that a farmer can go from 70 ewes up to 120 ewes but that the money granted from destocking will be stopped. Restocking must be allowed to happen gradually because, as I have pointed out, it is not possible to go back to higher numbers of stock overnight. I ask that this not be allowed to become an even greater ecological disaster than the over-grazing situation, that this matter be tackled immediately and that farmers be allowed to have sustainable numbers of sheep to stop the hills being completely destroyed by overgrowth.

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