Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Last week, the national restoration law passed in Brussels. I was listening to the Minister of State's speech in my office. He said we have 24 months now to get what we need in place for this measure to work effectively. I will be working closely with him during these 24 months to ensure that farmers are not the ones who pay for nature restoration. I was interested to hear the Minister of State say that we made mistakes with designation in the past. That is most definitely the case.

In my county, significant areas of land are designated. The capital value of that land has been completely decimated. In my experience, I have never seen landowners or property owners that this was allowed to happen to before. The litmus test of nature restoration for rural Ireland will be if the capital value of this land is maintained. We must make sure that this happens. When the hen harrier designation commenced in my county, a scheme was brought in that was relatively attractive for the landowners. For the first three or four years, they got a reasonable payment for the designation of their land, but then that payment dried up to a trickle. They have now been left with a very small payment, which increases slightly where they have nesting hen harriers. The blanket ban on forestry in those areas has decimated the value of these farmers' land. We cannot allow this to happen with nature restoration. We will be watching closely.

We talk here about food security and what Europe is going to do in the area of sustainable food production. I refer to talking to farmers out on the ground. In the last couple of weeks, Brazil has announced it is going to increase its level of beef production by 20% by 2027. This will come at the expense of the rainforest. China is increasing domestic production of food significantly, especially in the context of dairy. Those countries are not looking at emissions or climate change. They are only concerned with food security and driving forward domestic food production. I am not saying we do not produce sustainable food. We do, by all means, but we cannot blind ourselves to what is happening in the rest of the world. We must be seriously concerned that there is not a universal global policy as regards the sustainability of food production. This is most definitely not happening now. As we debate this matter this evening, Europe is most definitely the pioneer in this regard, but the rest of the world is just as definitely not following this lead.

Turning to the rewetting of land, will farmers whose land is adjacent to a rewetting project get a written guarantee that the level of the water table on their land will not be impacted? I have met representatives of numerous farmers' groups who are extremely worried in this regard, especially about Bord na Móna's land. This is because commercial farmers have holdings adjacent to that land. If the Bord na Móna land is rewet, will it have an impact on the water table level of these farmers' lands? If it will, that will take away the economic viability of such holdings. These farmers have been looking for this written guarantee for several years but it has not been forthcoming. In the 24 months we now have to get protocols in place for nature restoration, this is an issue that most definitely must be addressed. Many cattle are being produced in upland areas as well, particularly in the context of our suckler herd. There is also a great deal of sheep production. We have promoted organic sheep production on our hills and we have secured a significant niche market for these products. Again, this type of production is bound to be impacted by this nature restoration law and compensation must also be in place in this regard.

The rewetting of areas is obviously going to be a significant part of nature restoration. We have a policy now, though, of a lack of maintenance of our rivers and streams. Is this going to continue unabated? Houses in my constituency are being flooded. The numbers in this regard are increasing each year because the rivers and streams in these localities have not been cleaned for many years. A good deal of very productive farmland is being affected because rivers and streams are not being maintained. I am old enough to remember when these rivers and streams were maintained regularly. When they were cleaned and maintained, there were significant fish populations in them. This nonsense that the maintenance of rivers will destroy the habitats for fish is just that, nonsense. The maintenance of rivers will not impact the fish populations in them. The representatives of an angling club contacted me a few weeks ago. That club cannot have angling competitions on the River Suir because it cannot access the banks due to the briars and other vegetation having got out of control. Historically, this part of the River Suir was very good for fishing. That the lack of maintenance is having such an impact on this angling sport really makes a nonsense of the situation. This must stop. It is having a major impact on rural Ireland. Our rivers must be for what they are for, namely, to get water away as quickly as possible when it falls on farmland and allow that land to be productive.

Rewetting will recreate habitats in bogs, etc. I raised the subject of invasive species with the Minister of State before during a Topical Issue debate. I saw during the week that there is extra funding. Now is the time to tackle these invasive species. These habitats, especially those in damp areas, will have many ground-nesting birds.

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Ground-nesting birds will not survive where mink is prevalent. We also have the problem of cormorants which are coming more and more inland and destroying large numbers of fish and habitats as well. They are completely destroying the foliage on islands in rivers. We have to address the issue of these invasive species. It is no use putting the structures in place that would allow these habitats to develop if the native species that we want to see in them are being killed off by mink etc. At this crossroads with the nature restoration law coming in, we need to put a budget in place that will deal with those invasive species and keep them under control.

The Minister of State mentioned forestry in his speech. I am privileged to be Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and Marine in this Dáil. Our forestry policy is not working. We have thrown a significant amount of money at forestry in the last 12 to 18 months with a new forestry policy but figures do not lie. Our acreage under forestry is actually dropping. Virtually no afforestation is taking place. Farmers are deciding with their feet that it is not economical to plant forestry. We need to go back and re-examine this. We now have designated land with a blanket ban, unenclosed land with a blanket ban and land with a certain level of peat with a blanket ban. Environmental scientists have appeared before our committee to say that those blanket bans are actually hindering the creation of the habitats we are trying to create and that different stages of afforestation in some or all of those areas would actually help the creation of proper habitats for the wildlife and birdlife we are trying to protect and increase. We have significant targets for afforestation. Afforestation is a key part of meeting our emissions targets. We need to go back and review our forestry policy.

The programme for Government has a target of 8,000 ha of afforestation per year. When this Government comes to its close, in six months' or 12 months' time whenever the next election comes, we will not have achieved 8,000 ha in the lifetime of this Government. That is a serious indictment of us and a forestry policy that is just not working. I work closely with Coillte and the private contractors. They have what they see as solutions to the lack of afforestation. I have argued this with the Minister repeatedly. We need to get those stakeholders onside and we need to show farmers how forestry can be profitable.

One of the major issues is that someone planting for afforestation must leave a third of the land idle. People are just not going to make that decision because when it is fit to clear-fell in 30 or 35 years' time, the profitability of that land will be hugely hindered by the amount of land that has to be left for biodiversity. We need to do the balance sheet. Forestry is hugely important to having materials for building in 30 or 35 years' time. In my view the balance sheet is not being done correctly at the moment.

There has been media focus on the CAP payments for land that will be in restoration. It is essential that those payments are guaranteed. However, guaranteeing them for the next five or seven years is not enough; they need to be guaranteed for several generations. The physical changes that will now happen to land under the restoration will not be able to be reversed in any short period of time. So, it is not just enough to guarantee those CAP payments for the next five years or the next seven years. They have to be guaranteed for an extended period of time. People with land that will now be designated for restoration must have environmental schemes in place to allow the income lost to be gained through those various schemes. That will be the acid test for restoration. As well as having the single farm payment for those farmers if we have schemes in place to allow an income to be generated, it will ensure that this restoration will be a success and it will maintain the capital value of those lands that will be in restoration.

I will finish where I started. The litmus test is that land that is designated for restoration must not lose its capital value. We need to use the next two years to ensure that happens.

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