Compensation deal is sought on hills
FARMERS on designated lands in different parts of Galway last week met with Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Minister, Heather Humphreys, in an effort to ‘improve their lot’ over the coming months.
Problems with fencing, the lack of an adequate compensation package and stocking rate requirements all featured prominently on the agenda at the meeting in Dublin.
The meeting was attended by Galway IFA Chairman Pat Murphy as well as P. J. Conroy and Eamonn Nee – all three said that they got a good hearing from the Minister.
“It gave hill and commonage farmers the opportunity to get their point across directly to the Minister as regards the many serious issues that arise in relation to the designation of farmland.
“Farmers who have their lands designated are at a serious disadvantage, involving a raft of restrictions and their plight has to be responded to by the Government,” said Pat Murphy.
PJ Conroy told the Farming Tribune that farmers in the Slieve Aughties faced a situation where they weren’t allowed to erect a proper boundary fence in a restricted area without applying for planning permission to Galway County Council.
“The cost of applying for planning permission on the area involved would have been €18,000 and after all that there was no guarantee that we’d be successful.
“To comply with Dept. of Agriculture regulations on grazing we needed to have animals on those fields and yet we’re not allowed to put up a proper fence to prevent them going out on the road, something that poses another problem in terms of road safety,” said PJ Conroy.
Connemara farmer Eamonn Nee, said that there was no specialist compensation scheme for farmers in designated areas since 2010 with just the GLAS environmental scheme in place in common with all other farmers.
“There is also a major problem for farmers who have to restock their lands after having to go through years of destocking. There is no way that hill sheep can be restocked overnight – they have to be bred from the hills to survive there,” said Eamonn Nee.
He said that given the raft of restrictions that not alone impacted on farming enterprises but also on issues such as the construction of family homes, a proper compensation package needed to be put in place.