Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not think that is necessary. The Senator seems to be operating a parallel negotiation to what the farming organisations were seeking. We have spent hours discussing a charter for farmers' rights. We made decisions and signed off on that, so I am not going to start undoing that now when it has already been finalised and agreed by all the farmers' representative bodies. The focus we need to have now is to ensure that we have a consistent and fair inspection regime, and that we do not go on farms unless we absolutely have to. Some 85% of area-based inspections are now made via satellite and we only have visitations if it is necessary to follow up on that and if there is a reason to do so.

Some of the other unannounced inspections are in areas where one has to have such inspections. If one is concerned about welfare, one must be able to make an unannounced inspection to see the reality of what is happening on a farm. One cannot give notice for that, so we are required to have a certain amount of unannounced inspections. To be fair, the Senator is right to raise this issue. The real problem arose in the past where unannounced inspections turned into announced inspections, because inspectors were on the farm on unannounced inspections they were also looking at other issues in the farmyard.That really upset farmers who felt they were entitled to receive notice before people came to look at a whole series of things. We have addressed that issue by saying no farmer will now be required to accept an announced inspection, for which the period of notice should be reasonable, on the back of an unannounced inspection. That will no longer happen, unless a farmer chooses to say, "I have nothing to hide. You can look at what you want. Let us get it out of the way today." An impression was given by farming organisations that there was pressure on farmers to accept a series of inspections on the back of an unannounced inspection. That is not acceptable and we have changed it. It will not happen in the future.