Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Táim buíoch as an seans seo chun cúpla focal a rá maidir leis an tuairisc. I am not a member of the agriculture committee. However, I attended a number of the meetings held at the time in question. They were very interesting and I am sorry I did not get to attend all of them. They were very informative and led to the formulation of this report.

As a former REPS planner, I am very familiar with commonages and the various schemes implemented in recent years, including REPS 1, REPS 2, REPS 3, REPS 4, the AEOS and, latterly, GLAS. As I said at a meeting in Westport, the bar has been raised consistently higher over the years because what were optional measures under REPS 1 suddenly became mandatory requirements under the code of good farm practice, requiring that land be kept in good agricultural condition. That is why standards have to rise. Having spoken to departmental officials during the time of the previous Government, I learned that even getting REPS 4 over the line was difficult because a considerable costing exercise applied to all of the basic measures and extra measures farmers had to take to qualify. It is becoming increasingly difficult to put these schemes by the Commission. That is why GLAS has generated a certain amount of difficulty. The Department has to be cognisant of the requirements of the Commission and has had to ask how it can get a scheme over the line and what needs to be done in that regard, bearing in mind that farmers are being paid. To qualify for the single farm payment and disadvantaged areas schemes for commonages, they have to do that little extra. This is to be expected considering that farmers had to take on additional options when they progressed from REPS 1 to REPS 4.

Regarding the report, I commend all those who have been involved much more than I have been. I include all members of the committee, the Chairman, Deputy Andrew Doyle, and others. On behalf of the IFA in counties Galway and Mayo, I invited a delegation to meet the Minister in departmental offices to discuss a number of options in 2012. This preceded the issuing of the minimum and maximum stocking figures, or perhaps it was just after their publication in the Irish Farmers Journal. Their publication led to considerable concern about commonages. Farmers felt their payment would drop from €100 to €30, for example, if every farmer was required to hold a minimum number of sheep on a hill. I am thankful that the Department did not send letters on behalf of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. If it had, there would have been war. It held back, but the figures were still published in the Irish Farmers Journal and there was much concern about them.

At the time of the discussion with the IFA, it was said nothing would be implemented without a liaison group. This led to the commonage implementation group, which we are discussing. Let me, first, address a few issues in the report and the proposals being considered by the Department. One is to increase the stocking of sheep on commonage lands as a means of addressing undergrazing. Problems associated with undergrazing have been exacerbated in recent years. Destocking took place, as was right and required, but, unfortunately, there was probably too much of it. In certain areas the fact that older farmers are not farming the hills to the extent that they might results in these problems.

With regard to the prescribed minimum and maximum stocking levels for individual commonages, there is a focus on payments to active farmers. This is a tricky matter because there are commonages that are being actively grazed by a number of farmers but not all of them. I have expressed the view previously that if a commonage on a hill is able to take 300 sheep and there are ten shares, with none dormant and three farmers with 100 sheep each on the hill, that hill is being farmed correctly and being kept in good agricultural condition. That should be the end of the matter. The Minister expressed concern that the Commission would not allow payment for the farmers claiming a single farm payment on the land but who were not actively farming it. I do not know whether this has been clarified, but if the hill is being farmed correctly, that should be the basis of our position on this issue.

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