Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is holding up the hill farmers and those on marginal lands. He has created a huge bureaucracy which has little purpose and that will save him for very little moneys.

The Department then asked farmers if their lands were designated as a special area of conservation, SAC, special protection area, SPA, or a natural heritage area, NHA. However, the Department has maps of every inch of every farmers' land, as well as maps of every SAC, SPA and NHA. With all this technology, why could the Department not match this up? If it had, it could have given the derogations a long time ago. Will the Minister explain why the Department asked farmers for this information?

Of the 4,000 decisions made on derogation, how many were favourable to the farmer? When can we expect the independent appeals committee to complete all of its work? Why do we have the farcical situation of the State writing to farmers for information on schemes of which it was the originator and holds on its own files?

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