Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 31 March 2015
153. Deputy Denis Naughten asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the criteria being considered for water vulnerable areas under the new green low-carbon agri-environmental scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12667/15]
View answerOnly approximately one sixth of farmers in Roscommon and east Galway will be in a position to apply under GLAS. Many parts of Roscommon and east Galway, particularly the northern part of the area, have heavy, water-logged soil. The southern part of the area is a limestone karst region. However, they are not considered to be water vulnerable areas. We have hit the headlines regarding the cryptosporidium in our water and many communities throughout Roscommon and east Galway have boil water notices in place. We have issues regarding trihalomethane, an organic contaminant, in our water. Why are we examining only water courses and not also aquifers and heavy soils?
Under the rural development regulations, the protection of water quality is one of the priorities to be addressed in the agri-environment programmes of all member states. GLAS is Ireland's new and innovative agri-environment scheme. Two GLAS actions are specifically designed to address the risk of what is known as point pollution in rivers, that is, pollution directly related to bovine access. These actions are protection of water courses and riparian margins. To achieve the maximum environmental benefits from these measures, my Department, in consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and using data supplied by the agency, has identified certain reaches of rivers throughout the country categorised as high status water and vulnerable status water. Farmers with these areas will receive tier 1 or tier 2 priority, respectively, in the approval process.
In both cases, the identification of the areas concerned was completed using an EPA data set. Spatial queries were run against the data set to identify the land parcels held on my Department's land parcel identification system, LPIS. The criteria used by my Department were that the land in question had to be declared by the applicant as "forage" on the 2014 single payment application, it had to be within a 15 m buffer of the water course identified in the EPA data set, and the applicant had to have bovines in either 2013 or 2014. For vulnerable water areas, the holding had to be identified as comprising at least 50% wet soils. The classification of all holdings in this fashion is stored on my Department's new, online GLAS system and is currently being used by farmers and their advisers to identify the actions required, as well as the tier position they hold.
The Deputy was in contact with some of the technical staff in my Department on this issue during the past week and they briefed me on that.
I will come back to the Minister on that.
I thank the Minister for that briefing, which clarified a number of these issues for me. However, the fundamental issue is that many parts of County Roscommon are not considered to have heavy soils. Even if the river is low-status, farmers will not be eligible under this provision in GLAS. In other parts of the county and east Galway where there are heavy soils, eligibility is confined to farmers who are "méarning" water courses. There are many karst limestone regions in my part of the country where rivers travel underground. No provision has made for them. They are vulnerable areas - we have evidence of this in the series of boil water notices in place throughout County Roscommon and east Galway - but no recognition is being given under the scheme for these catchments. Why are underground rivers excluded and overground rivers included? Why is it that only pristine overground rivers will automatically result in access to the scheme if a farmer is "méarning" the river but there has to be poor-quality water and poor marginal land for them to be eligible where the rivers are not up to standard?
It is wrong to say that we are not protecting underground watercourses. Under cross compliance provisions and other EU directives, farmers have serious responsibilities in respect of protecting them and they are very much aware of that. We can only do so much with GLAS. We had to prioritise and we sat down with EPA officials and spoke to representatives of the NGO community and farming organisations. We tried to put together a straightforward scheme that is easy to understand, implement, enforce and so on. There are other environmental challenges that need potentially to be promoted, which are not covered by GLAS. The scheme does not do everything but it does a great deal and, in the same way that REPS and AEOS did not do everything, they had a function.
We are using EPA maps which identify high-status and low-status watercourses. In each case bovines must be present and the parcel must be contiguous with the watercourse. In the case of low status, a further factor is employed to make it a qualifying vulnerable site - that is, the holding must have at least 50% wet soils. We can identify these parcels on our LPIS database and, from an enforcement point of view, that makes sense. While it is not perfect, we are doing a great deal for watercourses.
The difficulty is quite a number of boil water notices are in place in County Roscommon and east Galway. The source of the contamination is hard to know and it will never be proven. At the same time, an environmental scheme is being introduced and approximately one third of those eligible under AEOS and approximately one third of those who were eligible under REPS will be able to apply under GLAS. This means that only approximately one sixth of farmers in east Galway and County Roscommon will be in a position to apply for inclusion in the first two priority areas. Those who fall outside them are unlikely to receive financial assistance in this regard and they will not be encouraged to go forward. We are losing out significantly because of the criteria under the scheme, which are focused more on tillage regions than on vulnerable farms with bovines and sheep in the west, particularly in an intensive production area such as County Roscommon and east Galway.
Deputy Naughten suggests that GLAS is designed for arable farmers. When one talks to arable farmers, one does not get that reaction. We are prioritising commonage farmers here. We are prioritising farmers in SACs. If anything, there has been an emphasis on grass-based agriculture in disadvantaged areas.
It is simply not true to say that only a third of farmers in AEOS can apply for this. Many more farmers will be going into GLAS than ever went into AEOS. We hope there will be 30,000 in the first tranche and there will be another 20,000 next year, to bring it up to 50,000.
Roscommon and Galway.
AEOS was only ever a fraction of that.
The Minister is a national politician.
We cannot design a scheme for one county. We have to design a national scheme that has something in it for every county.
There is a lot in this for Roscommon, Galway, Donegal and the west. If one looks at the process around the design of GLAS and where we have taken most time in terms of consultation, amendment and change, it has been all about ensuring we are facilitating the west. I do not accept that criticism.
