Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will very briefly speak about something that tags on to what has been said by both groups. There are two examples in County Clare where the policy has not followed the effort made by the farmers. The first was on the Burren designated programme, where farmers changed their practice, which hugely benefited biodiversity. Their approach to farming got rid of all the hazel, and allowed the flora and fauna to recover. Now, the new ACRES scheme disincentivises farmers to continue that effort. That is wrong. I have made it clear to the Minister and the Department. It is not the Minister; it is the Department and some of the people who are driving it. That undermines farmers' confidence. Efforts were made by Michael Davoren and Brendan Dunford and others to get people on board, and they got on board. They were slow to do it because they did not see the benefit. Now that is being disincentivised with the changes to ACRES and some of the people will go back to putting out circular feeders and feeding silage on the land. It is not a benefit. It is a huge negative in terms of confidence. It is the same in the area that I come from, where the hen harrier scheme was introduced. That was a really good scheme, in fairness to the then Minister, John Gormley. Farmers were slow to buy in because they saw the restrictions on the designation. However, they got a bit of compensation. It helped them. They went back and the biodiversity of that land improved because of their adoption of the restrictions. That is now gone in the new ACRES scheme. It is great that we are trumpeting the fact that we have 45,000 or 46,000 farmers. Jesus, are we not we great? However, we are killing the bits in the middle and encouraging the intensive guys to put a bit of land into it. I get that there is a benefit there, but let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater in an effort to spread it right across the country when there was real and measurable progress. I do not think anybody would argue with the data coming out of the Burren and out of the hen harrier programmes. We need to get back to that and support those farmers much more. That is when you will get buy-in, when people see there is a consistent programme that will be there into the future. I apologise to my good friend, Senator Boylan.