Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have been raising the issue of the impact of domestic turf cutting on agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, eligibility and scoring for farmers with commonage land for weeks. I have spoken to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, about it, as well as writing to him. The Minister of State will know there has been significant uptake of ACRES among farmers in County Mayo and along the western seaboard and the amount of money received by farmers will largely be determined by the scoring of their fields for biodiversity. Many farmers in the west will be relying on commonage and mountain lands to generate these scores. Parcels are marked out of ten, with ten being the highest score. The issue is the scoring of mountain land, where active turf cutting means all farmers on that commonage will lose marks, even if the turf cutter with the turbary rights is not one of those farmers. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is advising that active turf cutting on parcels of land will lead to a reduction of 30% in the scoring. That means these parcels will now be marked out of seven. A score of four or more has to be achieved in order to get any payment.

Most commonage lands will have active turf cutting taking place and this 30% reduction for shareholders will see a drastic reduction in payments for individual farmers. People are waiting to cut their turf, but they do not want to jeopardise their neighbours' payments and they are unsure as to who this would affect those payments. They may decide not to cut, but find that others will do so, lending to all payments being reduced. I ask that a sensible approach be used here. Previous schemes, such as the wild Atlantic nature scheme, mapped the area of the mountain being cut and excluded that from the scoring, while the recent of the mountain parcel was scored normally. Farmers are responsible custodians of their lands and are making considerable efforts to embrace biodiversity and tackle climate change. They need clarity and certainty as to the income they will receive and they are more than willing to play their part.

This is a real issue. I am giving the Minister of State a solution to it. The issue can be cleared up. These communities are experiencing significant anxiety. We do not want to have a situation where neighbours are falling out with one another over whether they can cut turf on their bogs. There is no impediment to them cutting, but they do not want to take away 30% of their neighbours' payments either. These farmers are very much dependent on these payments. I am concerned about ACRES - we may talk about it at another stage - with regard to farmers' expectations of what they will get out of the scheme.

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When I see how things are transpiring at present, I think there will be farm families who will be hugely disappointed come September and October when they do not get the payments they were promised or they envisaged they might get under this scheme. That is a wider issue. I ask the Minister of State to look at it as well because farm families are dependent on these payments, this year above any other year, with the input costs and with the struggles of the cost of living around this as well.

The turf-cutting one is immediate. That needs to be solved now.

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