PJ Murphy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Heydon on his appointment to his Ministry. I have no doubt he will do a very fine job. I welcome this opportunity to discuss the CAP strategic plan. I will first speak about farm succession and the collaborative farming grant. We must learn from the mistakes in the previous farm retirement scheme in the nineties and early noughties where farmers were required to step away completely from activities on the family farm for fear of loss of payment. That was a most regrettable part of that scheme. We must ensure there are no knock-on effects on non-contributory pensions, etc., for the involvement of retiring farmers in any new scheme. Farm consolidation must form part of any new scheme. Young farmers must be encouraged to work consecutively with two or more retiring farmers of adjoining land with a long-term goal of the consolidation of those parcels of land.

I would like to take a closer look at some of the other Pillar 1 intervention payments and allocations and some opportunities we may be missing. I will start with the meagre €600,000 allocated to the apiculture sector to assist 4,400 Irish beekeepers. This critical sector is facing massive challenges through the importation of non-native bees and the associated problems as well as the importation of non-EU honey and honey-like substances sold for a pittance on our supermarket shelves. To break down this allocation, €600,000 between 4,400 beekeepers averages out at €136 each over the five-year period of the scheme, or €27.27 on average per annum per producer who qualifies. That borders on an insult to an industry facing a lot of challenges. I call on the managing authority to properly fund and incentivise the creation of large-scale sanctuaries for the native Irish honeybee through financial incentives for farmers and landowners as well as the designation of all State-owned land to this status.

Leaving aside the issue of delayed payments under ACRES, which I know the Minister is on top of and which is a legacy problem, I will focus on important omissions in the scheme design. I come from south County Galway, the heart of stone wall country. Unlike the hedgerows in other parts of Ireland, which the Minister mentioned and which are so well protected and funded through this scheme, the existence of our stone walls, their upkeep and maintenance and any associated funding are simply absent from this scheme for the vast majority of western farmers. This is quite contrary to the previous GLAS, which was much better in this regard.

Under the straw incorporation measure, tillage farmers are incentivised to plough straw back into the ground at source. As the Minister knows, coming from a tillage area in the east, over the past century and longer, straw has been brought from tillage areas in the south and east of the country to the west for animal bedding. This ill-considered measure has driven straw bedding prices through the roof for western livestock farmers. On top of that, after being used for bedding, the straw dung is then spread out on the land, so it eventually makes its way back into the ground in any event. As a representative of a farming community, I would like to speak about the direction we sometimes appear to be going as a country with one of our most important indigenous sectors. Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions are a global problem and food supply is a global challenge. Eight billion people in the world need to be fed and many of these people want to eat dairy and red meat. For as long as this demand exists, it will be met by some country or another. We in Ireland have the climate, soil, rainfall and expertise required to produce these products with the very lowest possible carbon footprint through our grass-feed model. If we want to get serious about assisting with greenhouse gas emissions on a global level, we had better stop the soft talk about reducing the national herd and get more serious about increasing the production of our premium-quality, environmentally sustainable agrifood products.

We heard earlier that there is concrete evidence that we can protect our biodiversity while farming in a productive way. The EPA water quality report has shown an improvement in water quality. The Minister has spoken about hedge renewal at a scale we have not seen before, waterways protection and the fantastic farming-with-nature programmes mentioned by Senator Noonan. We can protect and farm simultaneously, and this must be our aim.