Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Michael Creed, who is leading an agri-food trade mission in Turkey.

The hen harrier programme is a new locally-led project funded jointly by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the European Union under the European innovation partnership initiative. It is not a compensation scheme; rather, it is a pilot project designed to test new ways of managing these landscapes to the best advantage of the bird and the farmers living there. The hen harrier is an open moorland bird of prey. Hen harriers nest on the ground and their preferred nesting sites are unenclosed open moorland and heath or bog habitats. They also nest in young pre-thicket forestry plantations.

The hen harrier is one of our rarest birds. In Ireland the population is estimated to be in the region of 108 to 157 pairs and declining. The species is listed in Annex 1 of the birds directive, which means that these birds are subject to special conservation measures which, among other things. require member states to designate special protection areas, SPAs, for their conservation. Some 4,000 landowners have lands which are designated for the protection of the hen harrier, covering an area of 169,000 hectares. The agricultural area is a lot smaller, at 57,000 hectares.

The Department has no role in the designation of land as areas of conservation or protection. It is entirely a matter for the National Parks and Wildlife Service. As part of the current rural development plan, the Department seeks to address a wide range of environmental objectives, involving farmers in different ways and paying for additional actions undertaken and income forgone. Members will be familiar with most of them, notably GLAS, the organic farming scheme, the Burren programme and, more recently, the locally-led measures. The locally-led model is a bottom-up response to environmental challenges, involving farmers directly in the process, with flexible schemes and incorporating a results-based approach. This fits well with the European Commission's plans for European innovation partnerships, EIPs, which saw a range of actors working together, namely, farmers, NGOs, scientists and so on, in testing new and innovative approaches to a range of challenges, not only environmental ones.

In developing its proposals the Department was very conscious of the report and recommendations issued by the Oireachtas joint committee in 2015. While the report focused largely on the wider question of designation and compensation, it also highlighted the role farmers played in providing a public good when they worked to preserve the hen harrier and that they should be paid for this. It also recommended that farmers and farming groups be more involved in the entire process of protecting the hen harrier. This is the process from which the new hen harrier programme has grown. It is active in all six SPAs, including counties Cork and Kerry. While funded and supported by the Department, it is not a departmental scheme but a partnership involving many players. As well as seeking to protect the future of the bird, it explicitly seeks to create a stronger socioeconomic outlook for the agricultural communities in these areas and promote positive relations with these communities that have managed these sensitive landscapes for generations. The new hen harrier programme has been designed by a locally-led project team which worked in close collaboration with the farmers on the ground in these areas. A total of 31 separate meetings were held during the design process across the six SPAs, with over 500 farmers attending.

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