The programme for Government contains reference to the farmers charter 2015-2020 from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. This charter guarantees that farmers will receive their payments within a proper and orderly timeframe. Last week, the Minister of State in that Department announced that he is conducting a review of all land which was the subject of burning in recent weeks, much of it in the Taoiseach's constituency and in mine. A lot of mountain land was involved and hill farmers have been particularly badly affected. There is a suggestion that the review will look at the basic payments to which these farmers are entitled in order to withdraw them or to impose penalties. Many of these farmers spent the past couple of weeks trying to put out the fires and they fought very hard to try to deal with this situation. They are the victims of these fires yet we find that the Department is proposing to penalise them for it. Will the Taoiseach guarantee that the farmers whose land, much of which contained forestry, was the subject of these burnings will not be penalised for what has happened to them. In most cases the fires were caused by others, not the farmers in question.

I agree that farmers went out of their way to attempt to deal with the consequences of these fires. I deplore the actions of those who started these fires in the first instance. They were obviously unable to contain what happened afterwards and this resulted in massive destruction to property, assets and value, and also in terms of the impact on wildlife and nature in so many ways. For those who have been victimised by these acts of arson, if that is what they were, we cannot expect them to have the State suddenly say, "You are responsible for this yourself". If the land is blackened and the trees burned and if people's assets are decimated, I think it is an issue that needs to be looked at with some degree of compassion and consideration. It is a valid point and we will consider it very carefully.