Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This has been a useful debate. It has been useful to hear all the comments and contributions from everyone. I thank all Members for their support. The vast majority of Members have supported this important motion. It is topical, with where the negotiations are, that we should be debating this in the Dáil, because it is vital we debate and discuss this and that it is as open and transparent as possible so that people can see the decisions that have been made.

For the first time in the history of the CAP, this proposal has the potential to remove land from three baseline categories of land, which are arable land, permanent crops and permanent pasture. If land does not fall into one of these categories, then it loses its eligibility for all payment. I firmly believe this is not acceptable for farmers, who we are asking to deliver exceptionally high environmental standards. These farmers, often working in difficult conditions, deserve our full support, legal certainty and clarity about access to all payments in future. It is absolutely in our power to do this. The amendment proposed by the Council, supported by Ireland, is completely unnecessary.

We must consider the wider implications of this. Without properly-managed landscapes, which require farmers and agricultural activity to achieve, what direction are we headed in? Will it be a depopulated landscape or will we have unmanaged land which is ravaged by wildfires and that will actually increase carbon dioxide release and cause more emissions? Land stripped of any CAP support will become an environmental waste land with all biodiversity threatened.

It is essential to get this right. Farmers want to farm and will respond best when measures are designed around farming activity. Generations of experience have shown that traditional low-intensity farming practices are the best means of managing these lands. We have been here before when forestry was seen as the panacea to all our ills and this has proved to be a disaster under all the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic and environmental.

Equally, the imposed Natura directives, imposed without consultation, have not delivered for the farmer or for biodiversity. Consultation with and involvement of farmers is essential. I have consulted widely, and farmers are asking us and the Minister to remove this amendment as it is counterproductive and will not achieve anything other than putting farmers' livelihoods and rural communities at risk.

In recent days the details of the new results-based environment agri pilot programme, REAP, scheme have been unveiled with much fanfare by the Government. This scheme has been promoted as being a pilot scheme for future environmental schemes. Is the blatant omission of commonage land and land containing heather an indication of the direction of policy and that these areas are to be denied access to CAP payments and simply used as a carbon sequestration tool to offset emissions from other unsustainable practices?

The Minister has highlighted the proposed wording of this GAEC 2 as the key issue. It really is not the key issue, and I think the Minister knows this as well. The wording is open to interpretation, but the critical issue is the wording of the Council amendment. That is the key to this matter.

The focus on the three positions, including those of the Council and the European Parliament, is disingenuous as well. We are talking about the conditionality of the Council position and that is what the focus has been about. The Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, mentioned that it was the position of the European Parliament which was untenable. Why then did all the Fine Gael members support it? Maybe the Minister of State could answer that question.

The fact is that it is the Minister who will set the standard for an eligible hectare. He will be setting the standard for GAEC 2. It is completely within the Minister's power to designate when a farmer meets these standards and that when a farmer meets this GAEC 2 standard that his or her land is eligible as a right. Alternatively, will the Minister set the GAEC 2 slightly above the eligible hectare to exclude and discriminate some lands? That is the problem. That is also the problem in respect of what this amendment proposed by the Council does. It allows the standard to be set slightly above to allow land be excluded from an eligible hectare.

What we need is the Minister to set the standard definitely and to have that land there but to have it eligible as a right. That is all farmers are asking for and that is all they are interested in. I do not think that is a whole pile to ask. The land should be eligible, and eligible as a right. Then we can deal with environmental standards and with environmental protection from that point on.

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