Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and the publication of the Bill. "Miscellaneous provisions" allows for a number of things being included under the same Title. It is something of a pity because the central provision of the Bill, the ban on fur farming, is worthy enough of its own Bill with its own Title included but I understand the decision.

I served in the Department of the Gaeltacht which is across the road from Agriculture House where there were numerous protests. Perhaps the Minister of State was part of them in her day, I do not know. There were certainly noisy protests for a long number of years. They achieved a result. The ban was announced in Cabinet, of which I was a member, in June 2019. That came about by pressure and campaigning. I welcome the move. It has taken some time from that decision at Cabinet to the publication of the Bill. I know it was part of the programme for Government. As time goes on, there are things that are ethically and morally difficult to defend. That is evident in this case. I am sure that for whoever is here in ten or 20 years' time there may be other things that are taking place now that will equally be deemed difficult to defend. I will leave that for another day. I welcome the central provision and welcome the ethical treatment of the animals as they come to an end and the proper treatment of the owners and the workers who have been operating a legal business. We are, through legislation, closing them down for the reasons as stated.

Turning to the element on native trees, I particularly like the schedule with all the native trees that we have, particularly the hazel, ash, holly, crab apple, Scots pine, Sessile oak, pedunculate oak and the rowan. We are familiar with all those. They add so much beauty and diversity to the Irish countryside. I think I mentioned during the Forestry Bill 2014 the poor holly tree at Christmas. We are not talking about a few branches or a few sprigs of holly but unfortunately in certain cases whole holly trees being cut down at the base and taken away. That is a pity. One sees a lot of situations where they are all male holly trees and none with berries in certain areas. I hope there can be initiatives to enhance the situation regarding holly trees.

An area that comes up every year and will come out again in the next few weeks is that of the forage areas under the basic payments scheme and the disadvantaged areas scheme each year. For example, last year, as it would have been historically, the terms and conditions state that the eligible area excludes woods, scrub, ponds and marshy and wet areas. I understand that because there is very little grazing in those areas and in some cases they may be inaccessible therefore they are not deemed to be eligible. However, they are so important for biodiversity that, quite rightly, farmers are expected to promote them. Lands planted post-2009 are not eligible but presumably plantations pre-2009 are. I am not sure if that includes conifers or just deciduous trees. I am not sure about the areas either.

If there are native schemes that this legislation will allow for, it is important that they would be included in terms of forage areas because there is a difficulty we have in convincing not all but some farmers. I attended the IFA session in Athenry mart some weeks ago. There are some farmers who do not want to plant trees. They feel that it takes land out of production. They feel it is setting them back. Therefore, we have to try and encourage farmers. It is important that if small areas, even up to 1 acre are planted, they would be eligible in terms of forage areas as well. It is worth looking at scrub and so on. Under the satellite scheme, farmers get letters telling them that certain areas are not eligible and sometimes their first inclination is that they should remove it. Obviously we do not want that to happen.It is worth looking at small areas of forage acre like that, where it would be counterproductive to penalise them.

I wish the Minister of State the best of luck in getting the Bill through the Houses.