Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Senator Pippa Hackett):

I thank the Deputy. To finish where I ran out of time, the idea is to separate out those areas. Where turf-cutting is allowed, that will be taken off the overall score. The farmer should not be disadvantaged by cutting, but if the farmer is cutting on a non-turbary area, he or she will be disadvantaged by that, but that is because he or she is damaging the habitat and does not have the permission to do that. That is a welcome development. It also means turbary rights on commonages are unaffected if the shareholder wishes to proceed with that activity and he or she will not be penalised for that. In doing so, any scoring related to active turbary will be confined to those subunits of active turbary, thereby allowing the vast majority of commonage land to be assessed independently of turbary, where such rights exist. ACRES farmers will be paid in full for their combined score on non-turbary and turbary areas, subject to scheme ceilings. The ultimate aim of all the ACRES schemes is to deliver an environmental return to the land for the wider landscape and, it is hoped, to the farmer as well.

It is important to say ACRES is not an income support scheme in the same way basic income support for sustainability, BISS, and direct payments would be, but we want to see farmers rewarded for good work. That is why we are taking the results-based approach. We have seen it work well in terms of European Innovation Partnership, EIP, projects, such as the hen harrier project. This is what has spawned these new co-operation project levels. I am familiar with many of the areas on the western seaboard as well and I look forward to the farmers engaging and us delivering on our environment ambitions through this scheme.

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