Results 2,361-2,380 of 7,978 for speaker:Michael Fitzmaurice

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: Has anyone gone down this road?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: This was the under 30 ha path.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: Am I right in saying that the courts have ruled that if one person has 30 ha, another person has 60 ha and another individual has 40 ha beside it, that it is taken as a complex in one go?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: We had to do a lot of this stuff in trying to show we were not having an adverse effect in the line of the habitats directive and all that. Had our guests hydrology and ecology reports? I heard a scientist saying once that a bog was like a paper bag and that if you filled it with water and put one hole in it, the whole bog was gone. It was the most wrong statement ever made. I saw...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: Okay. In fairness to everybody on the committee, most of us are living in the country and we understand it but there is a block there. I am not going to come in here and tell the organisations we know how to solve it. The only way it will be solved is to haul in one of the chiefs who did the programme for Government and tell them this cannot keep going the way it is because there are too...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: God help ye if ye are.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: Mr. Mahon might tell us what an operator has to do in some other country in Europe, compared with here.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: Okay. I thank the Chairman.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: In what I have seen before, you have to be able show that something is not hydrologically linked to the other thing. That is a hydrologist and an ecologist. We have worked with RPS before on bogs. We had to show that, as well as doing the screening, the appropriate EIA and all the usual palaver that we have to do now. I have seen it before, where a drain or a ditch was rounded that was...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: No one can justify peat coming from another country. That is the first thing. The fact of the matter is that horticulture, the mushroom industry and domestic turf cutting do not use even 1% of the bogs of Ireland. People go on about re-wetting and sequestering carbon but it would take approximately 50 years to do Bord na Móna's holdings and others that are not being used. We are not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Impact of Peat Shortages on the Horticulture Industry: Discussion (Resumed) (12 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: To be clear, when bogs are separated, certain tests have to be done on them. There is stuff that has to be one. A pipe is put in the ground to allow water to upwell and determine the depth of lock and so on. It is provable. Do the witnesses understand? What I am trying to find is a solution to get things moving. We need to give an exemption so that people do not have to go through all...

Written Answers — Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Forestry Sector (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: 795. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if large-scale investors associated with a semi-state forestry company will be allowed to claim forestry premiums in the next forestry programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50165/22]

Written Answers — Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Forestry Sector (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: 796. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if the Forestry Service advertised and accepted applications for a forest-frost reconstitution scheme without having a standard operating procedure in place to deal with the applications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50166/22]

Written Answers — Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Forestry Sector (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: 797. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine further to Parliamentary Question Nos. 738 and 739 of 4 October 2022, the number of forest-frost reconstitution applications that are with his Department now; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50167/22]

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: General Scheme of the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: Is that definite? We have been hearing the contrary over the past two days.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: General Scheme of the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: No decision has been made in the past day or two.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: General Scheme of the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: I do not want the Minister of State to do so. I understand that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: General Scheme of the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: The Department has not seen-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: General Scheme of the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: The CVO assured the antiparasitic stakeholders committee that he had relayed to the Minister the concerns of merchants and co-ops-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine: General Scheme of the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2022)

Michael Fitzmaurice: The CVO, or the chief veterinary officer. He relayed to the Minister concerns that many of the current proposals were unworkable. Has the Minister's statement that he wants solutions to this issue that will not be detrimental to the various parties involved been acknowledged within the Department? Is there a concern in the Department stemming from the submissions we have seen and the...