Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The question is how long that will take and how long will the process be drawn out. It will be difficult to manage in a lot of cases.

Farmers who are claiming land and commonage as part of the single farm payment now will be required to graze that land in future in order to retain the payment for that land. That, in turn, will lead to difficulties in commonages and hills because individual stocking requirements will be very small for the relevant commonage. In the overall commonage scheme, it is impossible to manage a small amount of stock in such an area. That point should be re-examined and teased out a bit further.

I do not know what the answer is, but it should not be beyond us to come up with solutions to achieve a workable management plan that is to everyone's satisfaction. That can only be done, however, through consultation and dialogue. The implementation committee is the body to do that and make recommendations to the Department on how to resolve those issues. Those matters need to be addressed so that farmers can buy into the rural development programme and the GLAS scheme, which are necessary to maintain their incomes.

Drawing up the report on the commonage plan was a useful process.

We need to examine the consultation process closer for future reports and deal with the issues faced by farmers at present. I ask the Minister to examine the issues associated with the technical aspects and how farmers can comply. He should come up with solutions that satisfy as many people as possible, if not everybody.

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