Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Thomas Byrne. I thank him for his attendance. I know he is taking this Commencement matter on behalf of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

It took a little while for me to track down where I needed to go with this request because, while this is an agricultural practice and an environmental issue, it is actually the responsibility of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. It comes under the remit of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which comes under the auspices of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, so that is where I need to direct the question.

As outlined in the matter I raise, under the Wildlife Act, it is an offence to cut, burn, destroy wild vegetation or hedgerow from 1 March to 31 August, which is welcome from an environmental and a biodiversity perspective. Unfortunately, this year, due to the very inclement weather we have had in recent months, land is completely saturated, and it is nigh on impossible for machinery to travel on fields without doing untold damage. A lot of farmers, by virtue of the fact that their hedgerow maintenance is done by contractors, and the contractors have fallen so far behind in their workload they are not now going to get to all the farmers in question before 1 March. That is because they could not travel on the land, and they still cannot. We had another very wet night last night.

A lot of roadside hedges are cut so people who drive along these roads might ask what I am talking about as the hedges are cut. That is because that was the easy pickings for the contractors. They had the firm footing of the solid road to travel on, so during the wet weather they concentrated on the roadsides. In many cases, the inside of that same hedge was left uncut with the intention of coming back when the land dried out, but that has not happened and it does not appear that is going to happen before 1 March.

What I am looking for here this morning is a temporary extension.The main reason I ask for it is that we have the proverbial catch-22 for many farmers. The new environmental ACRES scheme is to be welcomed and is doing a great job towards our environmental targets and biodiversity. Some conditions of that scheme involve hedgerow maintenance. Farmers will find themselves in a catch-22 if they cannot - and many will not - get that maintenance, coppicing or laying of hedges done by 1 March. They will have the question of whether to commit an offence and do it after 1 March or face a situation where they are not compliant with a scheme they have signed up for. Because of the weather, a temporary extension of the 1 March deadline is the only solution to this problem. I hope the Minister of State is a bearer of good news on behalf of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. I hope the Minister of State can look favourably on this because there will be a catch down the line in the scheme he so desires and promotes and people will not be able to take some actions they have signed up to because of the deadline.