Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Cahill for raising this issue this morning. It is really important and every opportunity we get to communicate on it and discuss it is welcome. I absolutely accept that farmers have concerns about it and also that it is easy to create concern about it as well. The opportunity to engage, discuss and communicate where we are at and where we want to go is welcome. I, as Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, and this Government understand the concerns farmers have and are working to make sure they are accommodated to have a balanced, proportionate outcome here. Importantly, we need to have a good nature restoration law that provides the platform for ensuring we have strong nature and biodiversity recovery in the future, which is more important to farmers than everyone else.

I have worked closely with my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, which is the lead Department for this legislation. I have also taken a leading role at European level with the Agriculture and Fisheries Council where, along with my EU colleagues, we have made significant progress in ensuring that the law is workable for our farmers and our country overall. This was initially published more than a year ago. While the public debate on it has really only been apparent in the last month or less, I have been working on this for more than a year, since the publications were first published by the European Commission.

Since the publication of the European Commission’s proposal last year, my Department has been working closely with our colleagues in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and across Government to develop our national position on the proposals. The proposed text has evolved significantly within the Council and we can now look forward to the vote on the Council proposals at the Environment Council next week. Article 9 in the proposal focuses on agricultural ecosystems, introducing targets for increasing trends of farmland bird populations, grassland butterflies, stocks of organic carbon in mineral soils and high diversity landscape features. Ireland is already delivering significant action towards these objectives through our CAP strategic plan and I was glad to be able to approve 46,000 farmers to join our flagship agri-climate rural environmental scheme, ACRES, recently.

Article 9(4) proposes binding targets for restoration of drained organic soils under agricultural management, a proportion of which must be achieved through rewetting. It is this target that has received the most significant attention. The Council's proposals set the following minimum targets for restoration of drained peatland soils under agricultural management: 30% by 2030, of which a quarter must be rewetted; 40% by 2040, of which at least half must be rewetted; and 50% by 2050, of which at least half must be rewetted. The flexibilities, which I fought hard for, within the Council's proposal allow for delivery of this ambition on land under a variety of current uses, not just agricultural area. Under the Council's proposals, the extent of rewetting required will also be at the member state's discretion. There are significant flexibilities, which combined with other provisions, mean that under the Council’s agreed position, which we fought hard to achieve at European level, we would have the capacity up to 2050 to be able to meet our rewetting requirement from State-owned land if necessary.

We will, of course, provide options to farmers to contribute to that and to pay farmers who wish to participate. I have no doubt that given the experience I have had, and as we have seen over many years and decades with the farming community in Ireland, that where there are good schemes, good payments and sensible approaches taken, farmers will step up to the market, because farmers want to see a balanced, proportionate outcome here and want to make their contribution too. Food production is at the centre of it but this has to be done in harmony with nature and has to see nature restored.

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